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IlIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 

ty%^-^y^ — I 

I ^/UI ."^XL. I 



f UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.! 



MIDLAND POEMS 



BY 

ORSAMUS CHARLES DARE. 



.^ /i/Z?3.S^> 



LINCOLN: -^ 

?TATE JOCRKAL COMPAXT. 
1873. 



^>^'^^ 
^>^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871. by 

ORSAMUS CHARLES DAKE. 
In the Office of the Librarian of*Congre88 in Watshini^ton. 



TO MY WIFE. 



mi^a^ht October days but lin^-ei — 
Linger and lengthen without surcease, 

The fading- g-lory fade ever, and fling her 

Mystic mantle in charmed peace 
On woodland, and prairie, and sunlight splendor- 
HoAV sweet were dreaming 'mid scenes so tender 

The low winds murmuring and moving, 
Like spirits aimless in Edens vast. 

Should weave fair legends of -happy loving— 
The long, dim story of all the past: 

And, sweetest by far to thee and me, 

The lyrical voices, of chivalry. 

But autumn days of peace are waning: 
The far horizon grows sharp and cold: 

The keen winds utter but shrill complaining- 
Harsh tune for themes of the days of old. 

So I must sing, if I sing at all. 

Of things unwelcome that now befall. 

1 bring you songs to lit the weather- 
Tales, whose sad burden is grief to me: 

Perchance, ere long, we may roam together, 

'Mid knights and ladies of high degree. 
Where lordly castles tower o'er the hills. 
And olden beauty the dream-land fills. 

State University of Nebraska, 
November 6, 1873. 



CONTENTS. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY PICTURES— 


1. A Tale of The New Religion, . . -1 


II. The Spiritualist, . 


29 


HI. Two Lives, 


. 59 


A Library Ramble, 


99 


A Tale of the Jesuit Missions, 


. 121 


Sunset and Night, 


125 


Dead Leaves, 


. 128 


Invitation— IN Morte, 


129 


Past Sin, .... 


. 130 


Summer Flowers, . 


131 


With April Winds, 


. . . . 132 


An Autumn Thought, 


134 


Ad Thomam Carlyle, . 


. 137 


Let the Storm Rage, 


142 


A Prelude, 


. 144 


Desillusione, , 


147 


Mud Pies, . • • ■ 


. 150 


Influence of Animate Things, 


152 


The Coming Man, 


. 154 


The CEMETEm-, 


156 


Funeral Pageants, 


. 160 


The Sea, 


161 


Fragments, 


. 169 


AURELIA, . 


. 173 



Contents 



POEMS OF 1871— 

Graping, . . .185 

The Death of the STA(i. 190 

Longing, . . . 192 

The Fokgotten Poet, . HM 

The Unknown Sail, . lOH 

Indian Lover's Lament, . I'.tli 

To Zephyr, ....... 208 

MiSTHER O'Flanagan's A nvoi.sE ti I. a Cofntiirym ax, 205 
To THE Soi'TTi Wind, . .' - 20^ 

Magdalen, ....... 214 

Aspiration, ...... 225 

Sad Heart, Sow in Tears, . > . . 227 

It Matters Not, ... 22'. » 

Christmas Eve— 1869, ..... 2:!1 

Religiotts Divisions, ..... 234 

Nebraska— 1866, ...... 24:! 

A Farewell, ..... 245 

The Weeping Water, ... . . 247 



1^ R R A T A 



raU'c (iS, loth line, (Uli Avord — lor ''word'' read "world." 
Pai^e 102, 12th line, 4th word — for '\fmitemUe'''' read '■'■fauteu/'L' 
Paij-e 248, Uth line, last word — for "hills" read "rills." 



NINETEENTH CENTURY PICTURES. 



T. A TALE OF THE NEW RELIGION. 

II. THE SPIRITUALIST. 

III. TWO LIVES. 



A TALE OF THE NEW RELIGION. 



A COLD imperious land whose l)arren slopes, 
Fog- veiled and dark, lean to the rainy seas 
Like bride unwilling to a gray-beard groom; 
Whose shallow streams, from stony fountains fed 
Under black groves of pine, through mossy vales 
With many a granite cape or boulder vast 
Wage ceaseless controversy ; and whose breath 
.(Tempt not that breath for 'tis consumption's own) 
From endless wastes of marshland wanders up 
To poison the gray airs — a sombre land 
Of shadow, and the eclipse of the warm light. 
And things unnatural to the needs of men — 
New England, self-complacent, fronts the world- 
Yet though a land of barrenness and blight, 
"Where toilsome patience from the scanty mould 



2 



2 A Tale of flic A^C7u Religion. 

Wrings but a niggard substance, mite by mite, 
Now hath the endless effort of her sons 
Crowned her a queen among earth's provinces, 
By wealth, and worth, and intellectual homes,. 
And memories that grow old. A ^yonder-land 
It seems; a tidal line to mark the height 
Of man's achievement in material things, 
AVhere fate is adverse. Many a city lies 
Along its sallow shores, or by the dams 
That check its petulant rivers ; and the gales, 
That vex the hollow ocean to rough tones, 
Waft thither argosies of unsummed wealth 
From every quarter. But New England's eye, 
Through which appears life's outward circumstance 
And inner speculation — her prime gauge 
Of witchcraft, jubilees, religion, life, 
Is Boston. Thence goes forth a daily law 
To all the shoal of cities round about. 
To ancient villages curled up in sleep. 
To multitudinous homesteads in the hills, 
And to wayfarers born within her line, 
Wide-wandering in all lands. Opinion, fashion. 
Wear the clear Boston cut on countless backs: 
And so for good — alas I how oft for evil. 



A Tale of the Neia Religion. 3 

Her emissaries line earth's thoroughfares, 
Sowing in unfledged minds some pestilent thought 
Subversive of good order, and with peace 
Mouthed for a bait, strike at the holy creeds 
And customs that enshrine what peace earth knows. 
But Boston has no creed; or if she have, 
'Tis simply "Agitate!" Her ruling caste. 
Trained to disorganize, toil hard to shake 
The rock-ribbed temple of things most divine, 
And leave the living homeless, and the dead — 
Nowhere. 

There is a matron of this caste — • 
Janet Monell — wealthy, and somewhat known 
For a light trick of verse,- and for the rant 
Of many a fierce unfeminine utterance, 
When all forgetful of the privacy 
That most becomes a woman, and the shame 
Of down-cast eyes, and clear-browed modesty, 
She mounts the platform, and with piercing voice 
Inveighs against the staidness of the past. 
Arraigns St. Paul for that he bade her be 
No brawler, but a keeper at home, and grave 
And quiet, and invites her motherly sex 
To turn crusaders of the god Reform, 



4 A Talc of the New Religion. 

(The god whose other names are Restlessness, 

Irreverence, Self-Will, Experhiient), 

In schemes humanitarian. Peace she loves — 

She says so — and pathetically mourns 

That earth knows little of it. But she finds 

A sovereign panacea for all ills. 

In woman's finer impulse, sympathy, 

And adaptation to the use of suffrage; 

"Suffrage will close the day of lust and war. 

Repress ambition, change the moral tone 

Of the whole world. No living thing is safe. 

Except it vote; but voting cures all evils." 

Thus does she prate. 

But while, self-satisfied. 
And conscious of pure wisdom, she harangues 
A thronging rabble of her native town. 
Perchance a woman of the ^gean isles. 
Pale-faced and violet-eyed, sits on the rim 
Of outmost benches, musing on the show, 
And wondering if the creatures who applaud 
Are as the speaker: but at times her eyes 
Flash lightning fire. Ah, should their glances meet! 

Who is this woman? She is young and fair. 



A Tale of the New Religion. 5 

AVith c:oiIs of golden ringlet, and a brow 

Chaste as Diana's. But her face reveals 

Sorrow and care; and anger may have drawn 

A thread of loveliness from happy thoughts, 

Leaving a raveled edge against the world. 

What does she there in Boston % She was formed 

For lavish sunlight, and the tender spell 

Of mellow moons that wander in the blue, 

High over orange groves. Winds perfumed sweet 

With mingled odors of the sea and land. 

Where sea and land are glorious, should lisp low 

To fill her sense with sweetness, and assuage 

Life's restlessness. Love should attend her — 

Love in constant forms — mild eyes, delightful tones, 

And ministering cares that make a spirit sweet. 

Thus it once was. Li all the Rhodian land, 

Near Lindos, where the olive-wooded hills 

Slope down to purple valleys, and begirt 

A district studded thick with villages. 

No face was sunnier with the lavish light 

Of ripened maidenhood; no thrush more free, 

Than Helena Pittakys. Her good sire, 

A country gentleman of modest means. 

Who loved his children, and well-knew the world 



6 A Tale of the New Religion. 

For a great battle-field, against whose toils 

None can equip too well, in his own house 

Had had them taught the old philology^ 

The many tongues now used in the Levant, 

Music, and all the little common -place 

Of Greek domestic life. So she was learned 

Above most women; nay, above most men: 

And when, among the citron glades, at eve 

The village youth like nymphs and demigods 

Went flitting through the Romaika, she, 

Of all the comely, graceful sisterhood, 

Most looked the revel-queen. Was it then strange 

If Jules Monell, a shapely Boston youth 

And Harvard Bachelor, wandering at will, 

And sailing once to Lindos, sometime thought — 

Spell-bound amid the dances — that he saw 

No daughter of Pittakys, not a nymph. 

But faultless Dian stepping once again 

With slender gleaming foot the soundless turf 

Moon-silvered in fair Rhodes 1 ■ And was it strange 

If in long rambles through that ancient land, 

Hallowed by immemorial remains 

Of mournful Hellas, or in pleasant rides 

Across the hills to many a mouldering church 



A Tale of the New Religion. J 

That fell to ruin in the knightly wars, 

And from whose windy towers the nightingale, 

Hid in dark hoods of ivy, pours the strain 

Of her most subtle rapture — was it strange 

His shadow flying on the bridle paths, 

Or sitting motionless within an apse, 

Seemed often knitted with a slighter shade ? 

You will not deem it strange : for youth when left 

To natural impulse, sensitively thrills 

To beauty ; bows to worth ; and most delights 

In counterpart of color, nerve, and tone, 

Least like its own. 

And she ? vShe could not say 
But that she liked the Yankee; — liked him most. 
Because he was unlike the Rhodian youth; 
Less supple, whiter-skinned, and cooler in poise. 
She prized the manly temper that is bred 
Where men need not be servile — cringe and fawn 
To barbarous foreign despots; and she thought 
Jules had ripe worldly wisdom, and was ruled 
By amiable impulse. So she grew. 
Through sudden forward movements of the heart, 
Even with his desire; and made her plight 
To follow him across the western seas, 
To Boston. 



8 A Tale of the A^ew Religion. 

And anon they wed. Then, when. 
For the last time Pittakys' tearful eyes 
Looked on his daughter parting, brokenly 
He spoke: "The way is long to that great land 
Past the engulfing flood of angry seas, 
Long, and with perilous chances wildly crossed. 
I, in my life-time have not traveled far. 
Though I have been in Athens once, and twice 
Have voyaged to Smyrna. But, then I was young. 
And youth will venture. Now being old, 
I shall not try to reach you where you go — 
To that far city, Boston. It is hard 
To lose my children: I had hoped to see 
Them near me, living: but God's ways are best. 
Better that some of those who share my blood 
Be manly freeman in a free bold land. 
Than wear the Turk's accursed yoke in Rhodes! 
So I dismiss you with the better heart. 
Though I live lonelier to the end. In heaven 
Are mansions : we may meet again : this is 
My hope, my comfort. O my children. 
Be true man and true woman : firmly hold 
The faith delivered: be as I — christian 
And orthodox: for this, will help you prove 



A Tale of the ]\e7v Religion. C 

P^orgiving to each other : help you shun 

The Evil Eye. Now God go with you both ! " 

And as they went, the old man humbly bowed 

His righteous hoary head, as he had wont 

Through all life's tangled maze of sun and sin — 

Since paths are many and but one is straight, — 

Turning aside upon the shining sand 

To pray for them ; for he was not ashamed 

To be devout; nor thought it christian-like 

To hide away, as 'twere a guilty thing, 

Dependence deeply felt on Providence. 

Then the loud-roaring funnels smote the heaven, 

And the great populous steamer turned her prow 

Out to the Avaste: Rhodes faded: Malta came; 

Then Naples, Rome, Paris, and many a month 

Of glorious England; 'till the honeymoon 

Waning, a little satellite was seen — 

The sweetest thing in that domestic sky. 

Then they came home to Boston. 

How the heart 
Of Helena had flown across the sea, 
By love-lore piloted, to meet and love 
Her husband's mother! She had taught herself, 
In long anticipation, not to dread 



I O A Tale of tJie Neiv Religion. 

The strange far land where no tongue syllabled 

The stately sweetness of her native speech, 

Where every face and every custom wore 

An unfamiliar guise that seemed a mask, 

And where the skies, yea, even the doors of heaven 

Were hung with cold gray palls of mouldy cloud, 

From out whose covert sobbing wraiths of rain 

Stalked down the shadowy hills; for she had found, 

Ideally, a gentle motherly heart 

With knowledge, apprehension, timely hints. 

To guide her inexperience and make 

Her moods discreet. Yet with concern that stirred 

Emotion indefinable, she saw 

That from the windy and perplexing west. 

Where lay the root of all the days to come, 

Some night-mare, poisonous-beaked, had fallen on 

Jules, 
And stolen away the gladness of his smile. 
And when she sought its name, speaking of home, 
Or friends expectant, whom each measured throb 
Of the strong engines carried them more near, 
(As in life's sea each heart-beat crowds the swimmer 
Nearer an unknown company and shore, 
-Uncertain whether dark or bright,) she felt 



A Tale of the New Religion. 1 1 

His brief replies were empty of all joy. 

Then, for she could but probe him, he confessed 

His managing mother had her scheme for him. 

That he had disappointed : but he mocked, . 

Making wry faces at the thing foregone, 

And even at old Janet. So Helena 

Thought lightly of the matter, and loved Jules 

Still better, that he chose her as he did, 

Despite some ground of other preference. 

Yet wisely studious to please each friend 

Of him she followed far across the world. 

She decked herself with all the little art — 

The feminine aptitude for sure effect — 

That at the moment she could master. None 

Knew better, how a first impression holds 

On long appreciation. But when clothed 

In simple modesty of fitting robes — 

Her silken ringlets swaying from their looj) 

As amorous of the beauty of her cheek — 

With what chagrin she felt Janet's keen eyes 

Play like a fiery battery on her face. 

Or storm from head to foot — a scrutiny 

That ended with a look as plain as words 

^'I wish my son had never married you;" 



I 2 A Talc of the New KcUgiou. 

And how within her chamber Helena 
Wept bitter tears as week by week sped on, 
And the breach widened, for opinions clashed^ 
And baleful words leaped up between the two, 
Why need we tell at length? It is enough, 
That one was old and cold, and proud and vain. 
And discontent with God and man and woman, 
Seeking herself to be an oracle 
Named on all lips; the other, modest, meek. 
And full of faith divine and human trust. 
As every proper woman. How could these, 
Thus diverse in their spiritual mould and aim, 
Go hand in hand together"? 

So at last. 
Dislike was common law: whereat Janet, 
Knowing Jules' heart by knowledge of her own 
For an unstable thing, that any wind 
Might lift, and toss, and drift to dreamy coasts 
If there were promise of a dainty joy, 
Determined in her fierce and crooked will 
To drive the spectre from her daily path. 
The scheme devised before the Rhodian sun 
Had warmed the boy to silly sentiment. 
And made him marplot, yet should do its work. 



A Tale of tJie New Religion. I 3 

The world was free and wide; why should their 

house 
Be cumbered by a thing of lampless soul? 
She pitied Helena; but, then, the world 
Was not more wide than full of pithless mates 
For pithless women. For herself she looked 
Solely- to public progress, family gain : 
Jules, being her son, should stand front rank with 

her 
In liberal schemes to renovate the world. 
So she would bait her cautious trap to take 
The quarry, she had purposed in the past — 
A pard-like belle of her own neighborhood — 
Progressive, wealthy — being the orphan ward 
Of kindred spirits. She must win, she thought, 
Because her notice would be felt to do 
Much honor; and the notions of the girl. 
Formed in the ultraest school of modern thought, 
Were finely radical. 

The game began. 
By many a wily ruse, whose hidden point 
Caught, but not pricked, she made her devious way. 
The days, in beauteous order wonder-full. 



14 A Talc of the Neiv Religion. 

Brought Jules and the charmed girl to interviews, 

That lengthened, growing fond. The bland Janet 

Talked much to them of true affinities 

In heart and mind and station; and she hinted, 

That she could wish they two were fairly wed, 

And bound afar to some delightful land 

Beyond the impertinence of scandalous talk. 

They were so fitted for a common fate. 

Jules was not mated equally, she said: 

His wife was foreign-mannered; and, yet worse, 

Was superstitious as a bony Celt — 

Pinning her faith to dogmas and sour priests, 

And heedless of Free Thought, and lacking taste 

For liberal progression. So 'twere well, 

Could she be packed for Rhodes. And when the 

snares, 
Woven with spider cunning, took the feet 
That wandered willingly as they were led, 
Janet grew bolder ;^told the greedy pair 
They were affinities, and she would help 
Their hungering hearts to every natural bliss. 
Breaking the bar between by speedy forms 
Of legal process; and her theories 
Feeding their amorous wishes, she prevailed. 



A Talc of the Neiu Religion. I 5 

But what, meanwhile, of Helena? Humbly, 

As one who, tented while the rainy air 

Blazes with ceaseless lightning, hides and strives 

In studious common-place to calm the mind, 

She held her ways apart, involved in cares 

Of motherly duty; found it nobler far 

To practice peace than loudly to profess it. 

Yet would she seek by all her painful tact, 

By all her feminine instinct, to appease 

The keeper of the cage that was her world — 

Janet Monell. Failing, she strove, but failed. 

And when some tearful months had gone their way 

Into the sorry heap of human loss. 

She knew Janet might play a treacherous part. 

And more she knew : she knew that Jules was like 

His mother: that her hold upon his love 

Had loosened; and the thought of it, sometimes. 

Wrought at her neck as though a coiling snake 

Made her breath faint. But roused at length to see 

The greatness of her danger, piteously, 

With sobs that shook the milky founts of life. 

She fell upon her knees and begged of him 

To take her from that prison : to provide 

A safer shelter for her and her babe. 



I 6 J Tale of the New Religion. 

But Jules heard coldly; higgled when he spoke, 
Or shamed her with "Pooh!" "Pooh!" I'ill as 

she urged, 
Growling intemperate, he shari)ly said 
^'This is my home and here I mean to stay. 
If you would have a safer place, go seek it, 
Nor stay for my sake." Then he strode away; 
With hideous rush, with clang of door he strode, 
And Helena left lone in bitter tears, 
And blighting bitterness of heart, knew not 
How^ deep a gulf was cloven. Straight he went. 
With joy diffusing from his subtle heart 
Triumphant attitude and tone and smile, 
Like his who w^ins a battle in good cause, 
And closeting with Janet, it w^as contrived 
He should at once go westward, where remote 
From old observance and the stable forms 
Inherited from men of reverent mould, 
Frontier communities, cursed by the rule 
Of half-made-up projectors, planned their courts 
To be the tools of vile caprice and lust; 
Dispensing swift divorces for light fees. 
And scarce a formal inquiry as to cause. 
-So night and day he whirled along the track 



A Tale of the New Religion. I / 

The round sun follows in the afternoons, 
Past many a city, many a rural town 
And farm-land home, that came, and fled, and came, 
Till gleaming round a village in the woods 
He saw the Wabash flowing to the south. 
And there he paused and registered his name, 
And so became a citizen, whose weal 
The laws at every hazard must maintain. 
No hour was lost: he pushed his right to crave 
The arm of justice to stretch forth in power 
Against the unwarned woman he would crush. 
And scarcely had the paths where he was wont 
To move in Boston missed his passing feet, 
Ere Indiana courts had made decree, 
Because the tempers of his wife and him 
Were incompatible; and furthermore. 
Because his wife had an abusive tongue. 
Was a bad wife, bad mother to her babe. 
Incompetent, and various lying counts 
Of a Hke tenor, the aggrieved Monell 
Should have relief of that most wicked wife, 
And be divorced forever. And the court, 
Not to leave any righteousness undone, 
Further decreed, that since the foolish wife 
3 



1 8 A Tale of the New Religion. 

Was most incompetent to train her child, 

And was a vicious woman, Jules Monell 

Should have sole custody thereof. Wherefore, 

With a light heart — its only burden gone — 

Jules hurried back to Boston; and Janet 

With gay congratulation fluttered out 

To meet him; and the girl of liberal mind 

Came too; with red ripe lip to press she came. 

Her dewy darkling eyes with tender thought 

And praise and promise swimming. So all round. 

They were a trio full of happiness. 

Then ere the midnight shuddered in the streets. 

With customary forms, but privately, 

Jules took the woman for his other self. 

To lock her fate in his. And the next day, 

Leaving unheard the comments of the town — 

The mirth or rage of various-minded men, 

The pair embarked, and like two happy doves 

That nestward fly, they sailed upon the seas 

To bower in England. There they have a home 

Of luxury and content. But they went not. 

Sailing the seas to that fair English isle, 

Alone : with them a nurse went too, who bore, 

From the fond breast where it had smiled and slept 



A Talc of the New Religion. I 9 

Since its first hour, the child of Helena 
Pittakys. 

Then the lingering death in life. 
The slow disease of spirit that suspense 
But aggravates, came to its tedious end 
In Helena. To her, Avhen Jules had flown 
Rattling to westward for the knife of law 
That cut their lives in twain, had come a note 
Asserting business — western courts and costs — 
An urgent case. But not a garrulous word 
Of sympathy, such -as from mated hearts 
Stream up like bubbles from the depths of springs 
In endless flock, lay on the pencilled page. 
'Twas a mere note of information ; curt, 
As it were drafted by an agency; 
And gazing tearfully along its lines, 
She whispered "Jules went from me in his wrath; 
With unkind words: he now is never kind.'' 
But suddenly Janet to help the plot 
To an unquestioned issue, and lay bare 
Suspicions that might take obstructive form, 
(jrew blander ; talked of Rhodes ; and sometimes 

asked, 
]f Helena would like again to see 



20 A Tale of the New Religion. 

The Rhodian mountains and the olive woods, 
The pomegranate hedges, violet citron blooms, 
Slopes of green orange orchard, and the sea 
That moans bereft of its imperial past, 
And her light-hearted friends of other days? 
Then the young wife, with startled side-long glance, 
AV^ould seek the guile she felt but could not find 
In her tormenter; and she wished herself 
In Rhodes, or any other region that the sun, 
Rising or setting, tempers to man's need, 
So she might have her husband and her babe, 
And never see that serpent face again. 
She felt the plots about her ; felt her feet 
Snared in a mesh whose breadth she could not 

find. 
Yet what could she? Where was her strength to 

strive ? 
What use to cry ? 

One day she missed her babe; 
And all the house in all its hollows rang 
With long and shrilly clamors of the search. 
Janet was out, nor came for many an hour: 
And Helena moved too and fro in tears. 
Low-whispering in her bruised and fearful heart 



A Tale of the Ne7v Religion. 2 1 

"What should I do without my babe? Who else 

In this land loves me? What could comfort me 

Should I lose him?" And then an intense prayer, 

Against such loss, stole to the Silent Ear 

That hears the inarticulate wail of thought 

And treasures up the grief of humbled hearts. 

But as the hours trailed on Janet came back : 

And eagerly to her then, Helena : 

''Where is the babe?" Whereat, the bland Janet 

Told how her son had found another mate. 

Of more compatible moods; more suitable, 

In the affinities of flesh and spirit; one 

Of his first playmates, whom, a child, he loved, 

And who loved him despite the escapade 

Of youthful folly in Rhodes : that they were wed — 

Irrevocably wed; and now were far — 

Swift-steaming o'er the barren wastes of sea 

To dwell amid the glory of old lands. 

And might perhaps come back to this no more. 

And Helena blanched white and glanced aside. 

And with low voice, and humbly, asked again 

"W^here is my babe?" and then Janet went on 

With all the story of the western courts. 

And said, "The child sails too — he sails — is safe; 



2 2 A Talc of the New Religion. 

And you, be sure, will soon be glad of that, 
For you are unencufnbered in the world, 
And where your inclination leads can go." 

There are some bitter hours in every life : 

But in some lives the hours of bitterness 

Seem drugged with venom that no heart can bear 

When death or madness is the obvious goal 

To which the helpless spirit rushes down, 

Unless withheld by potent faith or rage. 

And sudden rage rose up in Helena 

To save her from despair; and with high look 

And tearless, she cried out " I am the sport 

Of monsters: this is devil-work 1 Monell — 

Woman — if such a fleshly thing you are — 

If not a wandering fiend unchained from hell. 

Who prate of peace and the humanities, 

And seek to l)e a pilot of 'Reform," 

But put the dagger to an innocent heart. 

If feeble, God shall judge between us two. 

I curse you I Take my curse I — the curse of one 

Perhaps of no importance in the world. 

But yet the meanest, humblest thing that lives 

Has rights, (rod-given feeling, hopes and fears, 



A Talc of the Nciv Religion. 23 

And no one may elude heaven's wratli who dares 
To outrage them/' 

"Dote not on heaven's wrath!" 
Janet said softly: "Hell is out of date, 
My child : we live in better times. But look you 1 
Our ways diverge, at once : the door stands wide — 
Your path lies through it.'" 

And then Helena; 
"I know my path, and I will take it too. 
But, woman, I shall not make glad your heart 
By fleeing to some filthy den of shame 
For refuge. You shall not hereafter say 
'She was a vile unworthy thing, and we, 
To save from taint the fair name of our house, 
Were forced to cast her off.' You shall not speak 
Such words of me. Beware of lying words ! " 
Thereat she turned and sought her chamber; caught 
With hurrying hand her modest small effects, 
Threw out the gifts her faithless husband gave, 
Retained mementos of the child whose life 
Had grown from hers ; and fell upon her bed 
In one faint agony of tears and prayer. 
But she meant not to linger; so uprose, 
And tottering through the room made haste to clear 



2 4 A Tale of the New Religion. 

Her painful eyes of their hot brimming floods^ 
And while composure struggled with her grief. 
Drew down her veil and softly stole away. 
But as she went, rounding a mighty church, 
That stood like a great fort of faith against 
The liberal hordes of Boston, in the snow — 
For it Avas winter — The Nativity — 
She paused a moment while, 'mid organ peals 
And thunderous sound of voices, broke and rolled 
The Angel's song athwart the chilly street — 
"Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men." Up to 

heaven 
She looked — the clouded Boston heaven : but there, 
Ev'n as she gazed the black clouds drew apart, 
And from the soft and holy blue beyond 
A gleam of happy sunshine touched her face. 
Heaven did not mock her sorrow ; heaven she 

knew 
Had no part in a useless misery. 
And she remembered what her father taught 
In other days, when speaking of the crown 
They win to wear in light who suffer most. 
And through much suffering are purified, 
That earth, despite its bustling hollow schemes 



A Tale of the New Religion. 2 5 

And sham pretension, gives no real peace, 

And has no peace to give : that promised peace — 

The ''Peace on Earth," — is of the ransomed soul ; 

An inward peace, though strife howl like a storm 

Over the hills and valleys of the world. 

She listened : and the song fell soothingly — 

Fell like a message sent direct to her — 

Bidding her trust; bidding her faith be strong; 

Bidding her find her comfort in the power 

Of Him who took upon Himself the load 

Of all whose weakness drives them to the cross. 

She went her way supported; tearfully, 

Confessing to herself that God is good; 

And feeling a low whisper in her hope. 

That He in time will make the crooked straight, 

AVorking from grievous discipline, a frame 

To make the endless rest more sweet. She told 

Her tale; found friends; and earns her daily bread, 

Teaching the tongue of Italy, music, 

And feminine sleights. And she preserves intact 

Her father's simple faith. 

But when Janet 
Is clamoring to a crowd about Reform, 
Peace, Suffrage, Temperance, and novelties 



26 A Talc of the Neiv Religion. 

Unnamed, seeking to drag moralities 
Into the foul political pool, perchance 
Sad Helena may sometime pause to hear; 
May wonder in her soul if all the crowd 
Applausive of the liberal schemes and modes 
Are at the core diseased as she who rants; 
And turn away with sick and wounded spirit, 
That in a world where good might well be done, 
The holiest words fly through uncleanest lips ; 
That creatures like Janet, devoid of faith, 
Humility, and justice, strive to be 
The inspiration of Reform. 

Think you! 
What sort of thing is that Reform whose root 
Is struck in Boston; and whose advocates 
Are like Janet Monell? Ask Helena, 
Widowed and childless, what she thinks of it ? 
And if she yet has joined the liberal cause? 



Note. — During tJie last days of /lis life, Mr. John 
Sticai't Mill had a consultation with Air. John Morley, 
relative to the establishment of the New Religion. The 
New Religion has for its nominal author M. Auguste 
Cofnte, who styled himself ' ' Fondateur de la Religion 
de r Human ite'.'" It is, however., probable that Comte 
owed much of his system to a study of the 7C>orhs of 
Mill. 

It is almost superfluous to say, that a group of nwn 
in and around Boston, and other groups, or isolated 
instances, in various parts of America, have adopted, 
and assiduously sought to extend, the New Religion, in 
all its features. The foregoing tale, which is but a 
child of the brain, is, I think, very properly located in 
that one city of the world wJiere the New Religion is 
most potential. I proffer it as my protest against a 
mutinous individualism, and the exceeding and scan- 
dalous facility of divorce. 



THE SPIRITUALIST. 



I. 



/^NCE, in a laughing afternoon, 

Down-looking from the heaven of June, 
A pale lost-angel, deathly fair, 
With tarnished wing slow-beat the air 
Above a valley in this land. 
Far off, she saw a village stand, 
And heard a silvery clang of bells 
Sweet as the music of sea-shells 
That breathe forever of the sea: 
And wondering what thereat might be, 
She poised her wing that way to sail. 
But then it was, that in the vale 
Just underneath her, she espied. 
Where woodland alleys, dim but wide, 



D The Spiritualist, 

Were cool with overspreading shade, 

A youthful couple — man and maid — 

'I'ogether sweetly wandering. 

Wherefore the angel furled her wing, 

And breaking from the mystic spells 

Of the bewildered happy bells, 

She stepped adown the shadowy air, 

And stood beside that fondling pair. 

Thenceforth she shared their loitering walk. 

And weighed the motives of their talk : 

Thenceforth admired the modest mien, 

The spodess thought, and hope serene, 

Of a sweet saint that seemed imbued 

With every grace of maidenhood. 

And much she envied in her soul 

One so complete, so soundly whole, 

And capable for love or bliss. 

*'I, too, was once as fair as this; 

But shall not be again,." she sighed. 

And for a moment, dreamy-eyed 

She stood absorbed, while far away 

In heavenly heights she seemed to stray. 

Of crime, and want, and canker free. 

And happy as we mortals be, 



The SpiritiiaUst. 3 1 

When, his long winter journey done, 

Back- to the north returns the sun. 

And Hfts the curtain of the snows, 

And brings the violet and the rose. 

And lets the mirth of summer in. 

But straightway she recalled her sin ; 

And fierce with gathering wrath she grew, 

As, o'er her robes her glances flew 

And marked each darker growing stain : 

"Would that all things might share this pain," 

She said, "nor any fairer be, 

To contrast with my misery. 

If heaven to me denies its rest, 

I would that nothing might be blest.'' 

Thereat upon the pair she turned 

For mischief; and her hot eyes burned 

AVith baleful and envenomed light, 

Like some dread meteor that at night 

(rlares in the welkin; and she grasped 

An arm round each unfelt, and clasped 

Her thought to theirs, that all might run 

Like many colors blent in one. 

And that one hers. Yet ere she wrought 

l^efilement of their blameless thought, 



2 The Spiritualist. 

A flashing wing beside her stirred, 

A once famiHar voice she heard, 

And to her shoulder came a hand. 

'' Stand forth!" the voice said; with command 

That on her guihy spirit fell 

Resistless, as the ocean swell. 

That drifts a shattered, helmless bark 

On some far path, whose end is dark, 

And she recoiled and faced her foe. 

Whiter his robes than new-laid snow 

By full-moons silvered; and his wings 

Were jeweled with strange opal things. 

Eye-like ; and on his kingly head 

A golden wreath was garlanded. 

Whose knots, amid the beamy curls, 

Were studded with resplendent pearls. 

Stern was he : in his flashing eye 

Rebuke and threatening seemed to lie. 

The prophecy of warlike deeds. 

Yet, as from night to night succeeds 

The crescent's growth, till heaven is clear 

Of darkness, and the hills appear 

Composed and solemn, vast and still. 

Some milder impulse orbed his will 



The Spiritualist. 3^ 

As crowding moments flitted by, 
Till pity filled his glittering eye, 
And gentleness his face o'erspread. 
^'And thus, we meet again," he said. 
With sweet low voice: ''O, sad to see 
Thee garmented in misery. 
And outcast in this deadly earth: 
Thee, who, a brief while ere the birth 
Of mortals into fateful time, 
Wert lovely as that heavenly clime 
Where we were heirs of noble things." 
But with a scowl of scorn, her wino-.s 
The fiend uplift, and fled away. 
Flecking the golden flame of day, 
As she would leave that vale remote. 
And long as he could see her float 
In the rich vapors of the sky, 
The Seraph, with observant eye, 
Pursued her lessening shape. At last, 
The cloak of hills was round her cast, 
And with his charge he walked the wood. 
Or like a champion warrior stood. 
When doleful creatures glimmered nigh. 



4 The Spiritualist. 

But \Vhen, no longer she need ply 

Her laboring van to stay the look 

Of gentle ruth she could not brook, 

The fierce lost-angel, backward turning. 

With jealous, keen impatience burning, 

By zigzag path, and stealthy flit. 

And brief concealment, soon alit 

Within the Avood, where lingered long 

The youth and maid and guardian strong. 

There, hiding like a scaly thing. 

That noiseless slides where shadows fling 

Their blackest mask, she viewed unseen 

Him she had loved, ere yet unclean^ 

Ere tempted yet she fell from heaven 

Infuriate and unforgiven. 

For in that elemental time 

Of trial, ere souls reach full prime, 

When life and death hang in the scale. 

And whether this, or that, prevail. 

Is ever fixed by loyalty 

To rule, and spiritual purity, 

Her fate with his had intertwined 

Like happy fancies in the mind. 



The Spiritualist. 35 

No fairer land the wide heaven knew 

Than that where their contentment grew : 

A cool bright land of sun and dews, 

And gentle homes and loves. To use 

That high estate with zealous care — 

Through brief probation to beware, 

Was all God ever asked of her. 

But once through heaven bold Lucifer 

Defective, stumbling for a flaw 

In the just measure of God's law, 

Spread fierce rebellion through all si)heres, 

And wrought a work of hate and tears 

No potent future can undo. 

And she, corrupted through and through 

By one low-fallen, who claimed to be 

Her spiritual affinity. 

Met him in lust, and fled afar, 

And fought, and lost, in that high war. 

When heaven was cleansed of guilty souls. 

And hiding here, in dens and holes 

That reek with odors damp and chill, 

Or in the fouler tomb's they fill 

Whose lives were given to evil deeds, 

She found her place. At times her needs 



;^6 The Spiritualist. 

Imperious, drove her forth to men — 

To harass, tempt, destroy; and then 

Rejoice that heaven was yet defied. 

But since the hour, when from his side, 

A suUied thing she fled away 

Into the loathsome Hfe, that lay 

Before her to the end of days, 

Then first her painful, eager gaze 

Reviewed the consort of her youth. 

It was an humbling sight, in sooth, 

For he, Uke her, had changed. But, oh! 

His was no change of overthrow. 

Of ruin, such as dwelt in her. 

But lovely had grown lovelier. 

And strong more strong. And well she knew. 

By the fair jewel gleaming through 

His bright brown curls, he had been crowned 

The ruler of some realm renowned : 

Yet left its state, like God's true knight, 

Crusading in the earth, to fight • 

Man's battle with a ghostly foe. 

With them he kept, she' saw him go, 

Shepherding them ; and through her breast 

Stole admiration ; then unrest 



The Spiritualist. 

That flamed to hate; for memory came 

To tell her she had chosen shame, 

And was an outcast unforgiven, 

While he had place and peace in heaven. 

Soon set the sun ; and evening's sigh, 

Unutterably lone went by : 

To mortals, it was but a breath; 

To her, it rudely whispered "Death;" 

Shuddering, she rose, she glanced around, 

There came no other sigh or sound. 

The dark leaves lay as still as stone. 

She stood beneath them all alone. 

Her will o'ermastered by dismay : 

She moaned, and, moaning, fled away. 



II. 



AVhen Autumn comes, and fair and still. 
The mild day lies on vale and hill. 
And sounds are soft and far away — 
A subtle influence of decay — 
A sympathy with nature steals 
Into the heart that finely feels. 



8 The Spiritualist. 

Heaven to our earth then seems so nigh, 

We scarce can deem it hard to die; 

To go from the temptations strong, 

That follow fast and follow long; 

To find from evil men release; 

To settle to high ways of peace. 

In the due place that waits our need. 

Thus many deem; thus, she, indeed. 

The villager, whom we have seen 

Love-wandering when the woods were green. 

She had been wed ; had vowed her life 

To woman's noblest office — wife ; 

Had thrilled with hopes maternal : found 

Her home a not too narrow bound, 

To gain the reverence all men give 

True wives, who for their wifehood live. 

Weeks were as years; and autumn came, 

Painting the woodlands as with flame, 

And mellowing all the prairie splendor; 

And while the world sat still and tender. 

Like friends at parting, who conceal 

Half the deep sorrow that they feel. 

Hidden from all but spiritual sense. 

One came for her — she knew from whence ; 



The SpiritiialisL 

She felt his presence from the first. 

God made her so for heaven athirst. 

She met his coming without fear. 

But when the parting hour drew near, 

As, through her window, with cahii eye, 

She searched the long, low arch o£ sky, 

The faded forests and the hills, 

Loving the ripeness that so fills 

With spiritual inspiration sober. 

The lingering pathos of October, 

Her mournful, heart-worn husband sought 

To know, if humanly she thought 

Of death, and where and what its sting. 

Then she: ^' Death is no fearful thing — 

Not that : its sting is weak ; and yet, 

I feel a conscious, clear regret, 

Perhaps; because, when I am dead. 

And on my grave some months have shed 

Sun-gleam and shadow, leaf and snow, 

Less and less moved you'll feel to go 

And linger near my ashes cold. 

That heavy, mouldering trances hold. 

Though still life's principle they keep. 

To be forgotten! I might weep 



40 TJie Spiritualist. 

For that; but, wherefore? There will come- 
White angels to my speechless tomb, 
Guarding its sweet, unmeasured rest, 
Like sunbeams that for aye invest 
The sod where hide the frost-bound flowers. 
Dear to tl>e pure, invisible powers, 
Who stream, like motes the light gives birth. 
Down through .the darkness of the earth. 
Are all the graves that hold the seed 
Unfountained Love Avith life shall feed. 
God gives our sleep, and /;/ our sleep." 
She spoke in faith; her faith was deep 
And calm, as lakes that conscious lie 
Under heaven's blue, unclouded eye. 
Far-sheltered by bright mountains round. 



Then soon again there was the sound 

Of a bell moving in its height, 

AVhose strokes made tremulous the lights 

That like a waning glory, lay 

Over the vale. From far away. 

That angel fated unto death. 

Sinful, and trembling at a breath 



The SpiritiiaUst. 4 1 

Prophetic, who had whilom fled, 
To hide her misery with the dead 
Untended by good angels' care, 
Returning, paused awhile in air, 
And listened to the solemn toll 
That knells the passing of a soul. 
Then she came near and saw the clay. 
Lovely and holy in decay : 
A prostrate temple, dark and cold, 
And yet a thing of perfect mould. 
Upon whose brow was fixed the seal 
No desolation can conceal — 
The cross baptismal faintly glowing. 
And, all that ruin overflowing. 
To her clear eye, love lay like light, 
And death was but a sleep of night. 
So deep that dreams had gone away. 



But when the body mouldering lay 
Entombed, and in the first distress, 
The faintness and the loneliness 
Of blasted hope, the husband came, 
Feeding by one low mound the flame 



42 The Spiritualist. 

Of his soul's yearning, and would call 
On her who heard him not at all, 
And strain his sight to reach the zone 
Where the stars sit, each on its throne, 
Lighting the paths of heaven, if there, 
Haply, some gleam to his despair 
Might bring relief up-beckoning him, 
The fiend, left tempter, shook a dim 
But glancing starlight ray, whose motion, 
Like tides moon-swayed in the mid-ocean. 
Told of an impulse from above. 
Seeing, he trembled; but of love 
Came strength; for he at once grew clear- 
Blindest when danger was most near — 
That his wife-angel had been sent 
From Paradise for his content. 
And then he felt a soft revealing — 
A subtle influence, that concealing 
Motion, and form, and that fond measure 
Of long caress that is love's pleasure. 
Seemed faint, as if in journeying far. 
Like the weak' beams of some pale star 
That die where first they chance to rest, 
She must expire upon his breast. 



Tlie Spiritualist. 43 

He wept for very thankfulness, 

And gently moved as to caress 

The invisible spirit folded there. 

But more elusive than the air, 

Or than dream-people of the night, 

That flit around us till daylight 

Dissolves our sleep, she seemed to be. 

Her form he could not find, nor see 

Her raiment: but his flesh grew cold, 

And faint his breath, as if the fold 

Of a fierce serpent strangled him. 

Then full of misery, his dim, 

Blood-shotten eyes he raised, and called 

On Christ; and as she were appalled. 

The spirit on his bosom lying 

Stirred, left him, and he heard a sighing 

As of far cedars, or the shore. 

Sand-paved, a river washes o'er. 

He begged of Christ to give her back; 

His prayers were useless to his lack; 

He only heard the wind's low tune; 

He only saw the pale, still moon ; 

He only felt a new despair, 

Deep as the grave beneath him there. 



44 The Spiritualist. 

-And other nights thus came and went, 
Like clouds where wind and fire are blent, 
Till, weakened in his natural force, 
The weary man forsook the source 
Whence love and light and strength descend 
In their own channels without end, 
As down the clefts of mountains flow 
To irrigate the lands below 
The streams of ever-living springs. 
And he went probing those wild things 
The Medium proffers; and he found 
Strange fascination in the sound 
Of table-raps, and in the gleam 
Of spectral arms, or in a stream 
Of haloed tresses, faintly showing, 
Or wafts of music — coming, going. 
Like thoughts of souls that know unrest. 



And while these matters in his breast 
From day to day the man revolved. 
And like a riddle unresolved, 
It baffled him to find a clue. 
The demon closer to him drew, 



The Spiritualist. 45 

And fed his brain with fantasies 

Of all impure and hollow bliss, 

And notions that at law rebelled. 

But not by these could he be quelled : 

His soul was yet too strong for vice, 

Voluptuous dreams and artifice. 

And a frail woman's sad undoing. 

His will set not to amorous wooing — 

To touches that bring only tears, 

To eye-light bold and sharp as spears — 

The guileful craft of hypocrites. 

'Mid lures of lust he kept his wits; 

And patient as the astronomer 

Who notes the influence of a star 

Unknown, in some dim tract of sky, 

And seeks it with unwearying eye, 

Till it is found, where faint it lies, 

He toiled amid the mysteries 

Upon the border-land of Time, 

And strove to know the life sublime 

Of spiritual being : thinking thus 

To make his wan days glorious — 

Soul-mated to the fellow soul 

Of his beloved. Nor far the goal 



46 The Spiritualist. 

Seemed to his wish. For he had heard 
In darkness, a low voice that stirred 
His pulses to a swifter sweep, 
As, when winds murmur, the blue deep 
Throbs into waves. Once there had risen 
At midnight, as from some, deep prison, 
A pale, sad face, with downcast eyes 
And luminous hair: her mouth to sighs 
Seemed fitted; and he wept to see 
That such endurance e'er must be. 
But not in that pain-haunted face, 
Nor in that lonely voice, was trace* 
Of the blest spirit that he sought. 
Hers was a face whose happy thought 
Is of the essence of the being : 
Whose voice is music well-agreeing 
With the sweet airs that fill the dome 
Of the blithe star that is her home — 
Where pain is not, nor thought of pain. 
Yet ever as he strove to gain 
Some sound or sight to cheer his sense 
With her celestial innocence, 
And felt as if she lingered near — 
Lingered — ah, why ? but must appear 



The Spiritualist. 47 

A moment later; if he called 

On Christ for filmless eyes, appalled 

The hidden presence seemed to be, 

And left him full of misery, 

In darkness : and the Mediums said, 

''Christ was a man; and Christ is dead. 

In His own circle He inherits 

Some place peculiar to his merits. 

But wherefore more? All heaven is great, 

And none upon another wait; 

For all in glory are the same." 

He paused: but with the frenzied flame 

Of expectation unfulfilled, 

He burned; and he was yet self-willed — 

Untamed to the firm reign of law, 

And heedless how old doctrines draw 

The trustful like flower-woven chains. 



So once at midnight, when the strains 
Of a faint music filled his room, 
And there came forth amid the gloom 
A white small hand, and then its arm. 
Rounded, and beautiful, and warm. 



48 The Spiritualist. 

But nothing more; and even this, 
Shining a moment, the abyss 
Of darkness swallowed, and the flow 
Of low, lone music sunk more low 
And died in silence, the swift chill 
Of a great hope made bold his will. 
And he cried out " If thou be she, 
O spirit, whom I seek, to me 
Why cruel in such strange revealing- 
Seen in some part, but more concealing \ 
Thy presence is but meaningless." 
Thereat he felt a faint caress, 
And a voice whispered in his ear. 
Low as the distant sounds we hear 
When slowly dies the golden day : 
"Drive me no more, O love, away; 
But fit thy spirit unto mine. 
And let me lead thee : I am thine. 
But thou must trust me only : follow, 
As to the sun goes e'er the swallow, 
Nor linger when I bid thee speed." 
And he, '^Beloved, thou art my need— 
My utmost need. Be thou to me 
Pilot of hope, and love, and will. 



The Spiritualist 49 

I will not stir except thou fill. 
My spirit with thy heavenly light : 
Only stand forth; shake off the night 
That veils thy presence : let me see 
Just what thou art, that I may be 
'Relieved of human doubt and dread." 
And then the angel softly said : 
^'Come forth, O love, the night is warm, 
And since 'tis very dark, my arm 
Shall clasp and guide thee while we stray. 
I have a house not far away — 
A palace fair, majestical, 
Where many fountains, musical, 
Play in their own unwasting light. 
Not here may I reward thy sight: 
But by those fountains you shall see 
More than your subtlest dream in me : 
And you shall lead me at your leisure, 
And in my palace find such pleasure 
As not a mortal yet has found." 
Thereat her arm begirt him round. 
Soft but yet mighty; and they went 
Forth, underneath the heaven-broad tent 



50 The Spiritualist. 

The winds had built of gloomy cloud- 
No star could pierce that awful shroud,. 
To throw its glimmer on their way, 
That down nor jjath nor alley lay, 
But through the open prairie wound. 
The world in slumber made no sound. 
The winds were low, and almost still : 
And then the man . grew weak of will, 
And all his courage seemed to fail. 
Whereat, the spirit: "Love, you quail 
Just at the moment of delight. 
Will you go back with bliss in sight? 
A little further is my door — 
Open to-night, or nevermore. 
O trust me, wholly : be more strong : 
Our love can never lead us wrong. 
Never was time so apt as this." 
And then he felt what seemed a kiss, 
*Or rose-leaf fluttering on his cheek. 
And he went onward faint and weak, 
Yet with a purpose to attain 
All that an utter trust could gain. 
Ere long his ear caught, from below 
As in a vale, the plash and flow 



The Spiritualist. 

Of waters as from fountains welling ; 

And there was low, weird music swelling 

Upon the stilly perfumed air. 

Far-off lights glimmered here and there, 

Rayless, yet beautiful and clear. 

And then his guide breathed at his ear, 

"Haste: for we near the happy bound 

Where more than life or death are found ; 

Where love that even the numb, cold grave 

May not destroy, and not enslave; 

Where bliss no man that lives on earth 

Has ever compassed — lacking worth — 

Bliss only known in Paradise, 

And hidden by divine device 

From things impure, shall soon be ours." 



They quickened pace: hope lent new powers 
To strength. And, lo! a dome more fair 
Than opiate vision soared in air, 
Wide-flanked by fountained lawns and woods, 
Where small birds gleamed in multitudes — 
Embodiments of all delight. 
Around them was no longer night; 



52 The Sph'itualist. 

But a soft radiance such as lies, 

Just after sunset, in the skies 

Over the sunken sun. It came 

Not from an elemental flame, 

That burns and darkens with the hours. 

Its fountain was the spiritual powers 

Of being, and was cloudless ever, 

As looks of tenderness, that never 

Perish from memory. A vision 

Utterly trancpiil and Elysian 

It stood, mocking all earth-born art. 

I'he man felt gleeful in his heart, 

As, after thunder storms are spent 

And fear is gone, comes merriment — 

The swift recoil from thought o'er-strained. 

And onward moving, he had gained 

The landing to an easy stair, 

And raised his eager foot in air 

To enter and make sure of bliss, 

When, lo ! with shuddering surge and hiss, 

An inky chasm yawned, like hell. 

The palace vanished, and he fell 

Down a sheer height to where below 

Tall cedars fringe a river's flow, 



The Spiritualist. 53 

And many a boulder flecks die sand. 
Falling, he felt the powerful hand 
Down-dragging, that had been his guide; 
And there was laughter at his side. 
Derisive of his pangs. He threw 
A passionate thought to Christ, that flew 
As it was sent: then bruised and torn, 
And senseless as the dead we mourn. 
He lay beneath a cedarn pall. 
And night, and silence, covered all. 



HI. 



O holy bells, of Sabbath time ! 
O, voices of that golden clime. 
Where childhood is forever playing. 
And youth, forever, is a-Maying, 
And age is never weak and cold. 
For all are young, though all grow old; 
Sweetest are ye of all the sounds 
That float or flow in mortal bounds; 
That float, or flow, or chime, or roar; 
Or sink, or sw^ell, or run before. 



54 The Spiritualist. 

Or follow after human fate, 
To gladden, warn, and consecrate. 
But sweetest far, when sins are past, 
And pale repentance finds, at last, 
God's help to claim His covenant grace. 
Transmitted in the holy place 
Where prayer is said, and blessing given- 
Free pardon in the name of heaven. 
O, well I know, one holy day, 
When hill and valley far away, 
Despite earth's livery of crime. 
Were lovely in the AjDril time. 
How sweetly on a sick ear fell 
The measures of the Sabbath bell. 



Listening, he wept : for death and life 
Had waged for him an equal strife. 
Ere life had conquered. He had lain 
Easy and patient after pain. 
While Strength and Health, twin-angels, came 
To knit their virtues in his frame. 
And give him back his natural ways. 
Thus lying, grief, for faithless days. 



The Spiritualist. 55 

Fiend-haunted to that headlong leap, 

Wrought like a torrent swollen and deep, 

That, after rains and yielding snows, 

Resistless through the country goes, 

Refining, in its mighty flood. 

The filth of city, glebe, and wood. 

Loathed was his sin : his sense of shame. 

Of utter vileness, burned like flame: 

And when repentance had subdued, 

He wept for honest gratitude. 

Then, hearing the benignant bells. 

Whose harmony of heaven foretells. 

He rose, and through the sunshine fair 

Was helped to gain the house of prayer. 

He found the altar draped in white, 

Paten and chalice gleaming bright, 

And heard the priest when prayers were said. 

Speak of the honored, holy dead. 

Saying: "Our loved ones are not lost; 

But yet they are no longer tost 

By earthly motives. They are clear 

Of all the influences felt here. 

They are not troubled by our sin — 

Know not what is, or might have been. 



5 6 The Spiritualist. 

They are at peace and wait for us. 

Their Hfe is wholly glorious. 

But we come near them when we take 

The covenant symbols: for we make 

Ourselves, repentant, one with Him 

Who, throned upon the Cherubim, 

Is one with all the holy dead. 

This bread and wine, of Christ, our Head,. 

Is representative. Draw near 

With humble confidence and fear. 

And have forgiveness of your sin. 

And let the life of heaven begin." 

Thankful, the weary penitent 

Moved to the chancel rail, and bent 

In earnest prayer. The bread and wine — 

Heaven's visible covenant seal and sign^ 

Sign of forgiveness of the past. 

Seal of adoption, first and last. 

Were taken while he pledged good faith 

And honest service ev'n to death. 

Then he arose and went his way, 

And lives the pilgrim life each day — 

Slow moving to the golden shore. 

So, through mild airs, or storms that roar,. 



The Spiritualist. cyr 

A noble steamer onward rides 
Across a waste of trackless tides, 
Seeking the land where she would be- 
Past all the peril of the sea. 



TWO LIVES. 



/^NE who was born into this restless time 

With sympathy for movement, yet with thought 
That gladUest anchored nearer to the dawn, 
In the vast stilhiess of antique repose, 
McPherson, poet, weary of the crowd. 
And weary, too, of wandering through the world. 
On a far sloping hillside, whose cool feet 
Bright lake-nymphs laved with peaceful ministries. 
Had built his home. It was a full-eyed spot — 
Rich in aesthetic stimulation — fraught 
With every possible freak of sun and shade ; 
And there he gathered costly books and pictures. 
Formed high ideals, studied much, dreamed more. 
And grew within himself an isolation 
Forever further from the common life. 
Yet was the manhood of his nature kingly; 



6o Two Lives. 

And oft he felt the hfe should not be lone. 
That aims at perfect methods. So his eye 
Went wandering through the immediate neighbor- 
hood, 
In lengthened quest among its many maids, 
Measuring each charm of each, and each defect, 
Or actual, or supposed. But none he found 
Sweet as his phantom fancies: none he asked 
To share his thought, his lucre, and his life. 
But deeper sinking in himself, he grew 
Closer to books and art, and longer lingered 
To watch the tipsy shadows reel and dip 
Across the hilly amphitheatre. 
Or sail the happy lake. And thus, perchance, 
His days had passed unploughed by incident 
Of tripping-smooth or rudely-rough romance, 
And he had withered at the roots of soul. 
And died unwept of any clinging thing 
That rose on him up higher into light. 
But for a concert. Wandering through the land, 
By advertisement heralded, from town 
To town came the Dulce Family — a troupe 
Of ''celebrated artistes;" everyone 
A "famous" singer; and a night they gave 



Two Lives. 6 1 

The quiet villagers, in whose fair vale 
McPherson dwelt. Then he, because his soul 
Was set to music, as the key that waits 
The skillful finger, and more passion found 
In modulated harmonies than one 
With nature less ideal, when the hour 
Summoned attendance, in a crowded hall. 
Where dashing forward like the flow of tides. 
Impatience clamored madly 'gainst the stage, 
Found himself waiting the "stupendous scheme" 
Of the Dulce Company. 

Anon, was seen 
A side door opening inward. Then outswung, 
With ponderous waddle, a three-hundred-pounder — ■ 
Music in avoirdupois : and this was Dulce. 
In all professional travel, his the name 
Borne by the troupe; a troupe, of men a pair 
And women twain ; who, gliding near their chief, 
Stood up in file, and sung their overture. 

But when the overture had had applause. 
And other songs had come and gone like lives 
Too lovely to last long in this wild world, 
She, of the women-singers that was younger. 



62 Two Lives. 

Stepped forth alone, and. gave to melody 
Impersonation perfect. For her mien, 
Unmarred of weakness, showed so virginal pure 
Through lithe and gracious action, and her art 
So matched her theme, that down the roaring 

hall 
Applause flew under every hand and foot. 
Then died antiphonally. Not a nerve 
But thrilled to that brief song: but most of all 
McPherson felt its influence, as a cloud 
Wind-rocks through heaven : his was a ]3oet-souL 



And when the concert ended, and the crowd 

Dispersed adown the labyrinth of the streets, 

He saw the moon low-lying on her back. 

And wan and watery on the western heights. 

Then a damp sigh crept to him out of space — 

Half felt to be prophetic. Home at last, 

He dreamed all night of songs he could not learn ; 

Of smiles that faded as they turned on him; 

Of waning moons dissolving into tears; 

Of a girl babe its dying mother left, 

With pleading look to him. 



Two Lives. 6 



Musing, next morn, 
Of portents and of dreams, awhile he paused, 
Irresolute in projects many hued. 
And fearful he might play the feverish fool 
Should he go chasing in the sight of men 
A strolling singer with a pretty face ; 
Yet bent to see if fate might hold in store 
Some better thing than emptiness of heart, 
He shuffled townwards, doubtfully and slow, 
And found the fair Christine. 

And, if, at night 
He felt the ineffable spell of a pure art 
And imflecked maiden modesty, by day 
He knew a woman formed for just esteem, 
Ripe for unselfisTi ministries, well-taught, 
And thoughtful in experience of a life 
That taxed the nerve, resistance, energy. 
Of her whole nature. So he lingered long.; 
And well the maid discerned his secret thought, 
And knew she had impressed him. 

But that Duke, 
Who did the heavy bass, and felt his heart 
Go quicker in the presence of Christine, 
Went shambling in and out through all the morn, 



64 Two Lives. 

Disordered. Love, he saw, might prove to be 
An easy thing for two, but rude for three; 
And thenceforth he felt hateful to the poet, 
And never would endure to read his rhymes. 

But perfumed hours exhaled, and with them passed 

The music-making Dulces, everyone — 

Lost in the abysmal maelstrom of the world. 

And now McPherson, with fresh food for dreams — 

Unfolding from Christine as flower from seed — 

Made from thick fancies an ideal shape 

Of perfect and enamoring womanhood, 

Such as with fleshly foot ne'er lit on earth. 

And through the calm, swift autumn days, he ranged 

The hilly country, carving out thought's idol — 

To daintier symmetry still pruning it. 

As one might touch a statue here and there, 

Guided by taste grown nicer in the study — 

Till leaves had fallen, and November gales. 

Whistling their dreary dirges in his ear. 

Drove him for shelter to his lonely house. 

There, idling once among the daily news, 

His eye caught fast upon a meagre line, 

That barely told the Dulces' whereabouts 



T'a<o Lives. 65 

In cities on the seaboard. Then the Bard, 
Mindful of her, who, of all womankind 
Sat highest in the reverence of his heart, 
And" gave his life the fable of his dreams. 
Seized pen, and bodied forth a moody song. 
That spoke, yet did not speak, his secret thought : 

Christine, Christine, the summer is over, 

The leaves have fallen, the birds have flown; 

And naught is abroad in meadow, or grove, or 
Flowerless garden, save winds that moan. 

And thou — hast thou left me forever, sweet rover? 

Farther and farther away you wander, 
Yonder past cities that sit by the sea. 

Time that is precious, alas! will you scpiander, 
Time, were you here, would be precious to me? 

Ah, that of quiet, Christine, you were fonder ! 

Life is too barren for lovers to trifle; 

Hearts that are earnest, O how can they range? 
Think not all gardens have nectar to rifle — 

Some grow but poisons; beware then of change! 
Who will be gay shall with tears get each eye full. 



66 Two Lives. 

What seems most splendid is foul as Gehenna. 

Circles that fashion rules, culture will shun. 
She is but simple, who flushes, for many, 

Charms most complete in the keeping of one. 
Sweet, be not dazed by the clink of the penny. 

Who are the mice you would find in your meshes'? 

Who the fresh victims would drown in your 
moat '? 
Who stand entranced, when a burst of song stretches 

The blonde fair curves of your marvellous throat? 
Whence is the praise, your proud fancy refreshes ? 

Praise, e"en if heartfelt, defers not a wrinkle. 

Days fly apace, and the. fire of the eye 
Wanes unperceived, like the sweet stars that twinkle 

Bright through the night, but in twilight must 
die. 
Soon threads of silver your fair head will si)rinkle. 

Then shall you say ''Ah, where is a cover 
Safe from the ills that encompass the old? 

Where is the fond faithful breast of my lover; 
Lips that are kind, and embraces that hold? — 

() for a strong arm about me to hover!" 



Two Lives. 6 J 

Voices the sweetest end ever in quavers; 

Time that is ruthless, kills all but the heart. 
On, as he comes, the toughest will wavers, 

Trembles a moment, and yields to its part. 
But love is immortal : love, only, heaven favors. 

List to the winds whose delicate fingers 
Lift the loose curls of your opulent head: 

These are the music that evermore hngers; 
Voices undying from lips that are dead — 

List; do you hear them, the mournful low singers'? 

These are the voices, that love never blesses — 
Notes, that are strung on a gamut of pain ; 

These are their voices who knew no caresses; 
Loved not, and knew not what love has to gain — 

Hear them : how lonely they sigh in your tresses ! 

Sweet, would"st be like them — a hollow sad murmur, 
Vexing the future with tones without cheer? 

Flit then forever, and follow the summer; 
Dazzle by beauty, and ravish the ear ! — 

Welcome the worship of every new comer ! 

Welcome — how can you? — those passionate glances, 
Lavished upon you like rays of the sun ! 



68 Two Lives. 

Find fast delight in gay amorous dances; 
Flirtings concluded as soon as begun — 
Live on for only what day by day chances. 

Ah, but your nights must be solemn and eerie, 
After the moths with burnt wings depart; 

Morns must be dull, and the afternoons dreary; 
Horror be thick in the tomb of the heart — 

Life must seem purposeless, vapid, and weary. 

Might you but long for a smile that is tender — 
Words without meaning for any but you ; 

Might you but shrink from the gaze and the 
splendor, 
Filling a sphere no thought can imbue ; 

Might you but tire of your gifts to be vendor — 

Pining for love in a word that grows colder — 
Satiate of flattery and glances that feign. 

Here should you rest, and never grow older; 
Here should time strive to be cruel in vain — 

Fairer he'd make you for one fond beholder. 

Living — through sunshine, or stormy weather. 
Nestling and closer forever we'd cling — 



Two Lives. 69 

Lighter and closer than feather to feather 

Under the breast and over the wing. 
Dying — I would we might die together. 

Why do I dream? Before I have ended, 

Onward you rove, and my song wastes in air. 

So let the plaint be forever suspended; 

Worship attend you while yet you are fair — 

But chasms, fate-cloven, can never be mended. 

So wrote he, and so published; and his song 
Fell under her brown eyes who was its theme. 
Wherefore it came about — or was it chance % 
Such wondrous things do happen in this world — 
That the Dulce singers inland came again, 
Bringing to country-folk melodious nights. 
And at the village that McPherson loved 
To overlook from slopes that drank the sun, 
Fair Christine grew the merest trifle ill — 
She had a cold, or something of the sort — 
And held the troupe a week. But much she saw, 
Albeit the Basso urged her need of rest — 
Of one who, certes, saw as much of her. 
His house she visited; and, eke, the nooks — 



70 Two Lives. 

Though out-door rambles were not good for colds — 
Where most in pleasant weather he would sit. 
And much she liked the situation ; much, 
Perchance, the situation's lord she liked. 
So they grew close, and intimate; nay, fond; 
Yet spoke no word of love, unless the eyes, 
And visible inclination each to each, 
Confessed what best were said, yet was not said. 
For like one walking in the trance of sleep, 
When light is useless, and the aim absurd, 
McPherson wandered darkly through those days. 
Drawn past the warm star pulsing at his side, 
And reaching towards that thin ideal height, 
Where, like a planet pale far up in heaven. 
Shone the cold myth of dreams. Yet well he saw 
The beauty of the soul beneath his feet. 
And felt that he were happiest of our kind 
To lift it up. 

For not a fleshless love. 
Carved in the subtle windings of his brain 
And cold as moonlight, hindered him alone; 
The windiest trump of hunger-bitten fame 
Blared fierce division in his towering hope. 
And he held back, and (|uestioned with himself: 



Two Lives. "J I 

*'The woman suits my eye, my mind, my heart; 
I find no flaw. Domestic life has here 
Its opportunity; and if foregone. 
How can I think 'twill come again to me. 
But stay ! Am I content to trim the sails 
Of thought and fancy, for the sluggish ponds 
Of common life ? to sink low to the plane- 
Of tame unvarying observances, and grow 
The willing slave of Omphale . and peace ? 
Are heights scaled easier by Egeria's aid — 
7'he haunting eye that beckons higher up, 
The spirit-foot that never hurts, or rolls, 
Or by the human weight of one who leans 
And must be lift^ 

Debating thus, and burned 
By fiery purpose to hold nothing dear. 
Nor shirk the weariness of loveless years. 
If such the means to win the peaks of art. 
Yet ever doubtful if his mood were best, 
And longing for the woman's voice and step 
About his lonely rooms — the ideal arm 
Transmuted to our better flesh and blood — 
He poised betwixt the dance of sun and shade. 
And let occasion slip. 



72 Two Lives. 

The trouj)e at length, 
Grudging — save Christine — time so idly spent, 
Grew clamorous for departure: ''What the use 
To longer stay in a dull town like this, 
And miss the profits for which we set out?" 
Straightway they went, and with them went Chris- 
tine, 
With reddened eyes, and heart that pricked for 

pain. 
But much the Basso inwardly rejoiced, 
And watched his times, and gently strove to please. 
While twenty months climbed up the rounds of 

light, 
And hid in heaven. Then Christine saw his worth, 
And 'gan within herself to hold discourse, 
Whether to make him happy with consent, 
Or longer dally with a distant dream, 
That fled before her, like a will-o'-the-wisp, 
Through unattainable, uncertain paths. 
Dwindling and dying in the dark. Till thus. 
As week by week she indecisive hung, 
Half ready to cast out the heedless old. 
And open wide her heart-doors to the new. 
Her sister-singer thrust beneath her eye 



Tivo Lives. 7^ 

A scrap of love-sick verse that bore her name 

Another folly of McPherson's coin— 
Nesthng, 'mid numerous poems, in a print: 

O, wild the April evenings; O, sad the sullen 
weather ! 
O full of gusty moaning, and dirge notes over- 
blown ! 
My love and I no longer are sitting here together, 
And the dirges coldly mutter, ''She is flown!" 

long ago she left me, and fled I know not 

whither; 
But in her eye was sweetness, and in her mouth 
a song. ■ 
She left me, as the summer leaves the tender 
blooms to wither. 
And the wintry hours behind her seem so long. 

1 wonder, O I wonder if again her smile shall 

find me, 
And on my willing spirit its perfect beauty cast, 
Or if remembrance only, with pensive spell must 

bind me. 
And forever chain my patience to the past. 



74 Tivo Lives. 

O weary heart, be silent; the times are bHnd 
with folly; 

With promises of pleasure and policies of gain; 
'Tis not for any maiden to long be melancholy, 

Or believe that song and beauty are in vain. 

Bear up, weak heart, be changeless : seek no vain 
balm 'for sorrow. 
But roam thy hidden chamber, and uncom- 
plaining mourn; 
And rave wild April evenings, unfold each 
gloomy morrow, 
Till the weary-footed future is outworn. 

This having read, pale Christine fled apart» 
Cut out the verses — read them o'er again — 
And spent an aching morning, full of tears 
As outside April weather. 

But anon. 
With force of will she struggled out to calm. 
And said, ''This is a trifler. I to him 
Am but the merest fiction of the fancy — 
A thing he holds far off to write songs to. 
If in his soul were that embittering need 
That real lovers have of real maids, 



Tivo Lives. 



IT) 



He would be here this day — this hour — and say so. 

His songs — Pah ! they are hollow as sea-shells — 

Meant for the multitudinous public eye, 

And not for mine. So, henceforth, to my thought, 

He shall be nothing but a memory 

To which discretion grudges all its room." 

And when, not long, thereafter. Basso sat 

Alone with her, and round them throbbed the 

spring, 
With dancing leaf and sweeping breadths of green. 
And the clear song of swift-returning birds. 
He saw a brimming light o'erflood her eyes. 
And knew the time that he had waited long, 
And drew her to him, and poured forth his hope, 
And life took orient shape. 

Then in good time. 
Without unnatural and long delay, 
These two, abandoned public shows, and wed. 
And as they passed beyond the public ear. 
Into the haven of domestic calm 
For them secluded, like a gallant ship, 
That, sailing into port, lets off a gun 
To tell how it has ridden down the waves 



76 Two Lives. 

And come to harbor, Basso tossed a card 

Straightway to him, who, by his sapphire lake. 

Sat trimming fancy with poetic shears. 

Which, when McPherson read, and felt perforce — 

Waking at once to sense — how great the loss 

Of such a pearl as had no duplicate, 

A pang tore through him like a bolt, sky-dropped. 

And he felt faint, and wandered round his hills, 

Like one for whom the daylight is no more. 

Till, calmer grown with time, deep in his heart 

He shut the mournful vision of the past. 

As we conceal the deathless looks and tones 

Of one long dead — shadowing it round with firs 

And cold, thick moss — at once a grave and shrine. 

Where shape unsympathetic never found. 

For sneer or comment, its obtrusive way. 

Thenceforth he daily ripened. Toil was sweet 
For its full-handed harvests — peace of mind — 
Growth, fame. So, till five years had clanged 

and barred 
Their gates against the clamor of the world, 
He gave his life to labor. Few the friends 
Who knew him closely; yet a few there were, 



Two Lives. "J J 

^Vith whom he chaffered in his walks, ox held 

Tea-table council to discern the times. 

To most, he seemed a waif of glittering ice, 

Insoluble — the drift of wintry seas; 

Yet, deep in life's dim caves, he nursed a flame, 

And to a memory, loyalty. In vain, 

A neighbor's friendly, managing, match-make wife 

Would set him face to face with one sole maid. 

And with pretence of duties leave the room; 

There was no dainty scen'e of amorous pith 

Worth pausing at the keyhole to explore; 

No utterance graver than small social chat, 

Unless McPherson spent in monologue. 

The fringe of thought that rustled round a theme 

By chance suggested, and to confidence 

Unapt as metaphysics. 

What he wrote — 
His poems — mostly struck a minor key; 
Like winds that wandering over mounded graves, 
And over tear-wet cheeks, in the abodes 
Of miserable men, breathe evermore 
Susurrous melancholy. Yet they touched. 
In hallowed souls, responsive elements ; 
For faith was in them — fear and love of God, 



7 8 Two Lives. 

And gentle will to men : men fiercely bold 
To dare the wrath of Him who rightly reigns, 
Abuse His sacrifice, and slough with wars, 
And lust, and lucre-getting, all their days. 
Suddenly grew in sympathetic hearts, 
That felt his influence, as a bed of reeds 
Is stirred by every motion of the wind, 
Desire to look their poet in the face, 
And hear his volumed, sweet, infectious voice, 
In its own natural tone. But he demurred — 
Scorning the platform where the ])rostitute. 
The coarse virago, and the man who deals 
In social revolutionary schemes. 
Disgorge a buzzard dose of mental froth 
Less succulent than the turbid foam of floods. 
And sallow with the ghastliness of schemes 
Swept up from hearts as barren of true aims 
As prairie rivers of good granite rock. 
Nor grew he to the mood awhile to flit. 
Mouthing, before the curious clapping crowds, 
Without stern effort, and the coarse appeal 
Of promised profits to aesthetic needs. 
"But I must save yon timber on the slope"— 
He said; ''nor let my vandal neighbor hack 



Two Lives. 79 

Its comely boles for boards that have their price. 

I will turn showman of a thing that roars, 

Yet goes about uncaged. So much, per night. 

To see the animal and hear him roar!" 

And forth he went, and lecturing far and near. 

Got plenteous gain, and saved the pretty wood. 

And made it sweet for one who loves to dream. 

But in his lecturing, as one night he stood 
Carelessly glancing through a decent crowd — 
The people of an inland country town — 
He found a face set round with funeral weeds. 
And thinned by wear or grief. It was the face 
To him supremest, in this much-faced world; 
The face that haunted thought, as a dark night 
Is haunted by the memories of the moon. 
Thus, then to front it, drove the hot flush back 
From cheek and forehead, and his strong frame 

shook 
In momentary ague. But none knew; 
For with a nervous cough, and effort huge 
As one who lifts a weight that tasks his strength, 
He curbed his weakness, and dashed through his 

hour, 
Looking her way no more. 



8o J\vo Lives. 

And how she passed. 
He saw not; for a Hterary group 
Of lyceum chiefs, and elders spectacled, 
And pretty misses sleek with sentiment, 
Ciathered to take his hand, as he came down 
From the low platform. But he hurried forth, 
Glad to escape their well-meant compliment 
And observations wholly just and wise. 
And once alone, sleepless, and full of thought, 
Went wandering, all the long and withering night, 
Upon the frosty side-walks of the town. 

And as he crept upon his weary rounds, 
Backwards and forwards, with indifferent heed 
Of house-dogs menacing his heels, the sun, 
Uprising, stood above the frosty hills. 
And woke the world to splendor. But his mind 
Grew blinder for the natural light. The land 
Swam full of shadows and uncertain ])aths; 
And since, in sooth, he could not shape excuse 
To seek the woman where she made her home, 
Nor dared he think she kept a niche for him 
In some dim corner of her curtained heart — 
Some nook unknown to all but stealthy steps — 



Tivo Lives. 8 1 

He saw but one way open; and that way 
Was just the rail by which all men might go. 
Thereat, he turned, and sped along the street, 
Intent to quit the town. But in mid-course, 
As he was hasting with the cheerier mind 
That action kindles — action settles doubt — 
And all the nightmare of the sullen night 
Evanished like a cloud, and he rejoiced, 
That, from a useless interview, his life 
Had not emerged worse tangled in the mesh 
Of hopeless longing and inveterate pain, 
From a cot window, open to the street 
Beside his path, a woman leaned to scan. 
With eye uplift, the cloudless skies of morn. 
It was Christine. 

So each looked well on each. 
Stood ground, nor flushed, nor turned away. And 

he: 
''Shall I come in ?"' 

''O surely!" said Christine, 
And hastened to a door, and drew a bolt, 
And they touched hands, and walked along a hall 
To a back parlor where there was a fire. 



82 Two Lives. 

Bat he, with thought full of tlie doleful weeds 
The lady wore, and eager for their cause, 
Asked after Basso. Thereat, Christine told 
The mournful story of her husband's fate — 
A tale of slow consumption, and of death, 
That scattered love-linked hopes, two years before. 

And now there was a sudden pause of speech — 
A moment of abstraction still as days 
When the leaves fade. Bright in the widow^'s eye, 
A rose-hued tear formed pendulous and fell. 
McPherson looked straight forward in the fire. 
Thus sitting, busied each \vith secret thought, 
And weaving past and future through the warp 
Of present hap, a door flung open wide, 
And, like a bird that flits across a bower. 
With flash of beauty and with burst of song. 
There entered, in night's trailing, pure w^hite robe, 
A blonde-haired cherub, with brown, gentle eyes, 
And bright, glad face — a miniature Christine, 
With just a touch of the dead Basso seen. 
Or here, or there — that to the widow ran. 
With cries of fondness, and was fondly clasped 
Close to the motherly heart. 



Two Lives, "^^i 

"A lovely child!" 
McPherson thought, and said: "And you two dwell 
Alone?" 

"Not we alone," was the reply; 
"I have a boy, a child of but two years — 
Born but a month before my husband died. 
We three, together with a widowed nurse, 
Who joins her humble fortunes unto mine, 
Are living here, where I have always lived." 
Again a pause. But in that fateful space 
Of transient silence, through McPherson 's mind, 
Ran, swift as darkness, this chill argument: 
"This is the only woman I have loved. 
Or shall love ever: free again to wed, 
Perchance I yet might win her. But the past: 
What can blot out the history it has made? 
What can redeem her heart from hidden love 
Of him to whom she gave her virgin vows? 
What can obliterate memory of the hours 
Spent in endearments, and, alack! the wish 
That my touch might sometimes be changed for 

his? 
Ah, tears will for that Basso trickle out — 
How could I honor her unless they should? 



84 T7U0 Lives. 

And she must be from him still less divorced 
By these two children, that perpetuate him, 
And half the fullness of her mind withhold 
From me and mine. Few that have loved and 

lost, 
Can deem the living equal with the deadj; 
The dead who passed ere fled life's great romance; 
And any trifling difference expressed. 
Might band herself and children — three to one — 
In momentary sullenness or words. 
Worse for their numbers; since 'tis harder far 
To placate many — noisy chubs at that, 
And inconsiderate — than a w^ife alone. 
Be wise; the ground seems hollow!" 

So his face, 
Changing in hue as thought evolved, and curbed 
The frankness felt at meeting, grew perplexed 
Even to sternness; and the woman's eye. 
Following, with shrewd observance, through all 

change. 
Instinctively divined his mental mood. 
Thereat, she led the way to other things, 
Probing, by methods of the feminine art, 
The order of his wont from day to day. 



Two Lives. 85 

And finding what the years had made of him. 
And he, drawn by the spell of personal grace, 
And by the charm of quiet sense, that spiced 
The clear, mellifluous volume of her talk. 
Long as he might, lingered. And as he went, 
Holding her shapely hand, and looking close 
Upon the face where worth made beauty fair, 
He said his steps might find her cot again. 
And frankly, she: ''Why not?" and so they parted. 

But, ere a litde week had measured time. 
Divided from the spell that presence casts, 
And jealous of the fair and blameless child, 
That, from her mother's arms had given back 
His searching gaze, with pure and trustful eyes. 
Humbly, headlong as horror through his soill 
Came dismal fancies, and such trains of doubt 
As first perplexed him. And through lecturing 

months, 
Questioning himself from day to day, he mused: 
^'What should a perfect woman do? Christine 
Hath been, through influential years, one flesh 
With Basso : she hath borne him heirs, and mixed 
Their dual natures — spirit, bone^ and blood — 



86 Two Lives. 

In two effusions of a heaven-blessed love. 

Will it be fair to Basso and his babes, 

If she become flesh of another man? 

Must she not be far nobler not to wed 

A second time? Do I do well, to seek 

To pass a change upon true widowhood?" 

Then, in another frame, sometimes he thought: 

"The Apostle says, 'Let younger women marry/ 

It is most natural — Christine is young — 

A comely widow, and, I think, a good. 

No other woman have I ever loved; 

And I, perchance, one day may marry her." 

But, home returned, he fell to former ways. 

Resuming all the methods of a life 

That ran in ruts and never swerved aside. 

And Christine, left to ponder on his moods. 
And knowing well that he came back no more 
Because her days Avere bound in motherhood, 
Determined not to wed a second time. 
For, though her mirror told her she was fair — 
Aye, full of fairness — and life held romance 
To brighten mourning weeds to maiden wiiite. 
Yet was there something due to self-respect. 



Two Lives. 87 

And happiness was far too nice to thrive 

In the rude keeping of a selfish hand. 

Her married years, her happy, wifely love, 

She held as wholly sacred — sweetest part 

Of all the strenuous and regretted past; 

Nor, for the sake of any man that lived. 

Would she conceal them as unfortunate. 

Or speak of them with smirk and bated breath. 

She felt due thankfulness for beauteous babes — 

For dear was motherly care. To plan of hers, 

They were no obstacle, but stimulus ; 

And every sacrifice was sweet, for them. 

So she would battle on against the world 

Alone, nor ever tempt a doubtful fate. 

And so the days went shadowing to eclipse. 
Till that stern angel, who observes our ways 
And marks the lightest thought of every man, 
Had writ the haps of swart years in his books. 
And clasped with seals the horrid, poisonous leaves, 
To keep the. record safe for Judgment Time. 
Meanwhile, McPherson grew, through toilsome 

change, 
Purer and greater in the grasp of art. 



88 Tivo Lives. 

And wrought still higher up the slippery steep 
Before men's eyes; but never strove to learn 
How fared the widow in her lonely life, 
Till, once, grown nervous from long overwork, 
Through warm-housed, winter months, he was 

enjoined 
By one whose skill he trusted, as he loved 
His life, and hoped for length of useful days, 
To give his weary brain a space of rest; 
To travel somewhat, and see pleasant sights. 
And change his habits. 

So he put aside 
The routine of employment, sought the sea. 
And, shallop-borne, flew on the bellying waves 
That set to lonely coasts; and then he went 
Into the maze of cities, where he saw 
Splendor and vice, and poverty and vice; 
And, gazing in the faces of the throngs 
Endlessly shifting, like the subtle forms 
Of the kaleidoscope, he wondered much 
Whence they all came, and went, in endless change; 
How lived, and how combined. Then, having yet 
Some meagre space of idling time, he shpped, 
Unherdded and secretly, one morix, 



Two Lives. 89 

Into the village where the woman dwelt. 
"For I will see her from afar," quoth he; 
''Perhaps her influence may be felt no more. 
But I have loved her once — yea, loved her long — 
Though with a weakening love these many years. 
I will just see how time affects her face, 
Or if he pluck the beauty from her eye, 
Or if a silver thread coil like a snake 
Amid the sunny treasures of her hair. 
And I will see her children — ah!" 

Such was 
His purpose; but when questioning one he met. 
Of her condition, he was told she lay 
Low with a dreadful sickness. Then he j)aced. 
In doubtful mood, on towards the cot whose place 
Memory had kept familiar. At the gate 
He paused, revolving o'er and o'er his right 
To enter, and the use to her or him. 
But, while he doubted, to his inner sense 
Came an impulsion irresistible. 
That he was needed. vSo he gained the door. 
And was admitted by a sleepy nurse, 
Who cautioned him to silence; "For," she said, 
"The lady, sir, indeed is very low." 



90 T-iL'o Lives. 

Then he moved in on tip-toe through the hall, 
And looked across the chamber where, before, 
He once had sat, when time had greener years — 
Had sat, and loved the sight of her who now, 
White as her couch, and wasted by disease, 
Lay with closed eyes uplifted as in prayer. 
But when, with stealth, he stepped to gain a chair. 
The sound aroused her; and her opened eyes 
Met his; and her sick face gave welcome smile; 
And her weak hand was lifted out for his. 
Then she, '' O I have longed and prayed^or this — 
So much I need to see you ere I die." 

But he, with all the love of other days 

Rekindled, and aflame at sight of her. 

With tear-dimmed eyes: '^ Dear love, talk not of 

death. 
But talk of health, and happy, lengthened days. 
And life with one who now knows all the force 
And keen necessity of deathless love. 
Let death be far away — O far away ! " 

But she, "Perchance, beyond this blighting world, 
Where fates are seldom woven as we wish, 
We two may see each other in the light 



Two Lives. 91 

Of cheerful days. But never here; — not here. 
Life's shallow current, wasted in the sand 
Of ceaseless care, has almost ebbed away. 
My strength, o'erspent is gone. 

Through all these years^ 
Since I was left alone to earn my bread, 
And nurture the dependent innocence 
Of my sweet babes, a music-teacher, I 
Have striven unceasingly. Until of late. 
My will and hope were firm. I earned support, 
And felt the gratitude of those who see 
Heaven shape its goodness to their feeble powers. 
But now so many teachers are afield — 
And each, no doubt, has care and need enough — 
My class has dwindled like a flock of birds 
That hunters follow. Wherefore, I have pieced 
My scanty income by the seamstress' gains. 
Or teaching writing, or some kindred thing. 
O'ertasked no doubt, but more oppressed by care, 
I toiled along with stout unquailing heart, 
Until my noble boy — a Httle saint 
In beauty and in gentleness, — grew sick. 
With a child's ailment, and rose up no more. 
O, he was lovely! Often he would see 



92 Two Lives. 

The pensive shade apon my wasting face, 
And say: 'Dear Mamma, when I'm old enough, 
I'll stand between you and this biting world, 
And you shall rest from all these weary cares.' 
But I thank God he shall not soil or wear 
His dainty shoulder, tugging at the load 
Of life's misfortunes. Happy is the grave. 
That shuts the pure from danger and from need. 
Happy, I think it too, for such as I '" — 

'' Not so 1 " McPherson cried ; " You still shall live, 
And live as free of care as all my love 
And faithful toil can make you. Let the past 
•Go hide its head amid its deadly graves; 
But let the future rise with ready feet, 
And quiet smiles, and pledge of new romance. 
Rouse up, I pray, from this wan lethargy, 
And be to me second to God alone!" 

But she with feebler breath, o'ertasked by talk. 
And the excitement of a wish fulfilled, 

^'I would for your sake I might longer live; 
But life has spent its forces in my frame. 
Battling the fevbr. I am past all hope — 

.In this world. ^'ou may only close my eyes: 



T7V0 Lives. 93 

For that God sends you — that — yes — something 

more. 
Oh, if you love me, hear my last request; 
See you my child — my little sweet Christine \ 
God grant to her a happier life than mine. 
I have no relative in all the world 
Fitted to take a trust so sensitive, 
And make her what I'd have her. I appeal,, 
Ey all the love you ever felt for* me ; 
By all the privilege of dying love — 
That surely now is generously heard — • 
That her you take for yours, when I am gone. 
To be your child, as she thus far is mine ; 
To be an object of your fatherly care 
Through all her girlish days. Is it too much ? "" 
And keen and hungry her beseeching eyes 
Looked into his. 

But he let go her hand. 
And moving round to where the young child sat, 
Close clasped her in his piteous arms, and said: 
''She shall be yours and mine until I die. 
And I will do by her a father's part, 
And love her as you love her. Should you meet 
Her guardian angel up above the blue, 



94 Two Lives. 

As years roll on, he shall bring word of her; 
Shall tell of her unfolding to be like 
Her mother, by my care." 

And then the sick: 
"Come near, I pray, and let me kiss you both, 
And press you to my heart; for time is brief, 
And I am weary, and I fain would sleep. 
But I am happy now, and die content; 
Yet, in my Saviour's house, if so He please, 
One day I shall meet both of you with love. 
And all that glorious life beyond the blue 
We'll pass as near together as we may." 

So they bent low to her, and she embraced. 

With feeble arms, her lover and her child, 

And kissed them both on brow, and cheek, and 

eyes — 
Eyes blind with tears ; but she, she did not weep — 
The dying do not weep ; and him she thanked 
For all the love that he had felt for her, 
In past or present, and that he made smooth 
Her pathway from the world, by taking up 
The burden of the child she left behind. 
And then she slept. 



Two Lives. 95 

J^Lit: at the dead of night, 
When all was silent in the dreary house, 
And the o'erweary nurse drowsed in her chair, 
McPherson, watching by the bed, beheld 
Christine's brown eyes unfold with a bright smile 
Of recognition; and she moved her hand 
To show that she would have him lift her up. 
So he upraised her, and she laid her head 
Gently, and lovingly, against his breast. 
And looked up in his eyes — a peaceful look. 
And full of hope and happiness — and thus, 
A moment held, she passed away. 

But he. 
With heart that must have broken but for tears, 
Long gazing in her face, clasped o'er and o'er 
The lifeless clay from which the thought had fled; 
Then laid her down, and drew the thin dark lids 
Across the orbs that needed not the light. 

But when all funeral rites were duly paid, 
McPherson, with the child that now was his. 
Set out for his own home. And with him, then. 
He took the coffined body of Christine, 
And the cold ashes of her husband too, 



96 Two Lives. 

And of the little boy that gre-w between, 
When, full of life, they were as full of love; 
And brought them to a churchyard near his home, 
And laid them side by side. " P^or these," he 

said, 
"Are my own family — all; all that she loved, 
Shall evermore be dear to me." 

And there, 
On jjleasant evenings, often you may see 
The Poet and the little maid Christine, 
Who come to trim the sod, and pass an hour 
Beside the grave of her whom still they love. 
Whom still they hope one day again to meet. 
And trust she hopes as much to meet with them. 
A costly sculpture stands above her head. 
And at the heads of Basso and the child; 
And weeping willows Avhisper there a tone 
Too wild and lonely for articulate words. 

But in his house McPherson rears the child. 
With care of conscience, manners, mind, and taste. 
He finds her teachers of the very best, 
And talks to her of both her parents gone. 
But of her mother most : and Avhen he dies 



Two Lives, 97 

She will have ail the wealth that now is his, 

For he is as a father, and she calls 

Him by that name. But day by day he kneels 

Before the picture of the dead Christine, 

And prays, that cured of every selfish aim. 

He may, at last, be found clad in a robe 

Whitened by Calvary, and gain the place 

Where she, and those she loved, have entered in, 

And be forever dear to them and her. 



A LIBRARY RAMBLE. 



linsxsxBxsi Kuaz Id 



TO MRS. E. R. KLINE, 

These verses (about one-half of which wei'c written 
under her roof in the winter of 1865-6J, aj'e affec- 
tionately inscribed by the son of her brother. They are 
the p7'oduct of no captious and iinfragrant spirit, nor 
of a spirit insensible to many excellences, upon the 
whole, in those herein criticised. Yet, taking the indi- 
vidual performance of each subject, in entire extent, 
it is not felt that injustice has anywhere been done. 



A LIBRARY RAMBLE. 



TN the slow hours of long, midsummer days, 
When half-fed dogs run mad and take to biting, 
When thermometric columns ''go up kiting," 

And the hot air seems almost bound to blaze, 

Adown the gullet slip dissolving ices 

Without much provocation or assistance; 

A good cigar, too, aids life's weak resistance, 

And sans ciilotte — the briefest hint suffices. 



Then as we He at full length, wooing quiet, 
Or sit in shadow pleasant to the eyes — 
(With here and there a sudden slap at flies), 

The brain, long brightening by abstemious diet. 



I02 A Library Ramble. 

Glows mildly for a book. We'll try a poet: 

But which? No matter; any bard worth crown- 
ing. 
Ah, here's a yeoman of Parnassus — Browning ! 

Ripe grows his crop of fancies — let us mow it. 



A dozen lines flow smooth as summer zephyr; 
Then comes a sentence chafing like a storm, 
Out of connection, questionable of form. 

And guiltless of ideas as a heifer. 

We ponder o'er its meaning, rub the head. 
Twist in our fauteiiille^ or slow pace the floor. 
And seem to hear Poe's Raven — "Nevermore!" 

And wonder why such things are writ, or read. 

4. 

For poetry is thought perfumed by beauty, 
As handkerchiefs are sprinkled with cologne ; 
And though the modes of genius are its own, 

To common sense it owes the common duty. 

Thoughts that are clear, no true bard will make 
muddy; 



A Library Ramble. 1 03 

Tones that are sweet, he sweetly will dispense; 
His half-conceptions, round-about-intense 
Nerve-plunges will lie perdu in his study. 



So, Browning exit! Let them read his lumber, 
Who tug at Sanskrit, or Perpetual Motion. 
But, could we get our money back, a notion 

Pervades our brain, his books would not encumber 

Shelf-room again. 

Much abler was his wife,-'^ 
Who seems a woman to have been created. 
Chiefly with Robert Browning to be mated. 

And scold in pedant fashion all her life. 



Her books are many; but in August weather, 
With Fahrenheit at ninety-nine degrees. 
Good-bye to works so clearly works as these; 

And she and Robert shall be passed together. 

* We confess to liking many things that Mrs. Browning has 
written. But yet, although her place is high enough among female 
poets, we doubt if any one can fairly say she is not pedantic. More- 
over, she is sometimes nearly as opaque as her husband. 



I04 A Library Ramble. 

Shall we read Tennyson? We love him well. 
Or Matthew Arnold? Him we love no less.* 
These, among living Masters, well express 

The worth of culture to the chorded shell, 

7- 

And like our Bryant, filled with that repose 
Found in the eyes of nature, and the antique,, 
Mysterious wisdom of the polished Greek, 

Help us forget the fierce, material throes 

Of this confounding and consuming age. 

To lotus lands and quiet thoughts they lead us; 
With "Sweetness," "Light," and not with "Pro- 
gress" feed us. 

Till we grow thankful that our heritage 



8. 



In human things is partly calm and pure. 

Shall we read Longfellow? — the genial dreamer. 
Who, though of Massachusetts, is no screamer 

Of dogmas quiet people can't endure. 

* This line applies only to Mr. ArnoUrs verse, and not even to all 
of that. His dismal, rationalistic inflammation is certainly not a 
thing to love. 



A Library Ramble. 1 05 

The finest flavor of the Middle Ages,-^ 
Mellow and distant as the tones that float 
Landward at evening from a fluter's boat, 

Lends happy relish to his many pages. 

9- 

In continental matrice was he moulded, 
And Deutsch hexameters he loves, I ween, 
As all must know who read Evangeline, 

And breathe the airs in which her life is folded. 

But who writes much must sometime needs be tame; 
Or, try at tragedy perhaps and fail; 
And hereby hangs a not o'erfiattering tale, 

Yet none the less we magnify his fame. 



Shall we try Whittier^f He is a Quaker, 
And there's a sombre spirit in his lines. 

* Mr. Longfellow, although penetrated here and there by his sur- 
roundings, seems to me to be largely affected by Medhevalism. I 
believe he belongs, quite unconsciously, to the reflex wave in New 
England, that growing weary of beating the barren rocks of Ration- 
alism, is likely ere long to be surging backward towards Eonian 
superstitions, in as massive force as it rolled away from Puritanism 
to its present bed of doubt. 

t While Mr. Whiitier seems the most American of New England 
poets, he commonly talks as if he were also the purest and the 
best. 



I06 A Library Rajiiblc. 

His mental eye with much eye-water shines — 
(Indeed that visual orb may be a Shaker). 
The mists of the Atlantic, the pines' moaning, 
The drab of creed, and his keen hate of wrong, 
Have filled his musical and ceaseless song 
With a perpetual, plaintive undertoning. 



And yet we ever need wan Jeremiahs — 
Wet-eyed enthusiasts of the Whittier type; 
Singers with heaven's own pity grown so ripe 

That they feel every woe of earth's Pariahs, 

And consecrate it by their mournful verse. 
The poet in his place is a true preacher — 
(A thing that many sometimes doubt of Beech er. 

For he ''slops over," if he does no worse). 



Holmes flares around in gossip and in bandy— 
A clever mixture of clear flame and tallow. 
And 's prosy, likewise shallow- 

A literary hack for all jobs handy. 



A Library Ramble. 107 

But Keble, Cox, and Bickersteth, have given 
To quiet musing and to holy sorrow, 
Songs, whose unconscious wisdom seems to bor- 
row 

The tenderness and melody of heaven. 

13- 

The books of Alexander Smith to-day 

May stand untouched ; and yet for summer feed- 
ing, 
And light digestion, there's but little reading 

We might not with more profit put away. 

Pale, passion-blasted Swinburne, swan-like singing 
Wild death-songs of a putrid soul, we pass; — 
Ah, Whitman ! Are there donkeys on Parnass ? 

But Kingsley's voice with truer tone is ringing. 

14. 

Of female poets, Ingelow and Rossetti 

Shall each have bay-leaves if in our bestowal. 
But stop! Let's turn a book by Russell Lowell; 

Red lined — a binder's model — costly — pretty. 



1 08 A Library Ramble, 

And first, we have the badly rhyming ** Fable," 
Peppered with smartnesses and thin conceit ; 
Then dialect, for quantity not beat, 

And quality — defend us! we are able 



15- 



To read the dialect of scarce a man 

In all the world; we do not make exception; 
For things in embryo, wherefore predilection ? 

High art admits no mongrels in her plan. 

Give dialect to horses! Give to Lowell 

Due praise for prose and for some minor songs. 
But his "Cathedral"* to no muse belongs — 

When reverence should inspire his ink don't flow 
well. 



* The following from Mr. Lowell's "Cathedral" is perhaps a fair 
exhibit of the interior of his mind, at least, he himself sa}'8 it is: 
"In this brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved Cid, 
Tliis backwoods Charlemagne of empires new, 
Whose blundering heel instinctively finds out 
The goutier foot of speechless dignities, 
Who, meeting C:esar's self, would slap his back, 
Call him " Old Hoss " and challenge to a drink. 
My lungs draw braver air, my breast dilates 
With ampler manhood," etc. 
That is the abominable trash inspired in the mind of Mr. Lowell, 
by the magnificieut temple that has enshrined the prayers, the 



A Library Ramble. IO9 

16. 

The poet to the shelf! Disgusted, then 

With a low sigh, awhile we stand and ponder — 
Reach forth a hand and let it vaguely wander 

Across the octavo backs of prosier men. 

But as a frightened bird that soars and settles, 
Uncertain where 'tis safe to fold the wing, 
And even when lighting leaps with fearful spring, 

As if he hear the hum of hungry kettles, 



17- 



The hand goes up, then down; the mind objecting 
Here to the subject-matter, there to style. 
Until at length we hap upon Carlyle, 

And give a pause to sifting and rejecting. 



tears, the hopes, and the grandest memories of the grand and devout, 
as well as of the lowly and devout, of the successive generations 
reaching far back into the centuries. 

Amuchgreater man than Mr. Lowell,— Coleridge— thus speaks of 
a Cathedral: "On entering a Cathedral, I am filled with devotion 
and with awe; I am lost to the actualities that surround me, and 
my whole being expands into the infinite; earth and air, nature and 
art, all swell up into eternity, and the only sensible impression left, 
is that 1 am no\\\\ng:'— Coleridge's Works, Vol, 4, Page 235. 

Verily Boston has gone to seed! 



I lO A Library Riwible. 

Forth comes a book ; and comfortably seated, 
We try a jolt through corduroy or Choctaw, 
Our author pounding straw-men with the lock- 
jaw, 

And for hot summer weather too much heated. 



18. 



But we can half forgive his earlier faults, 

Though neither very few i\or very small; 

For radical fury once besets us all. 
And youth will "shoot Niagara." But age halts, 
And glances towards the bottom of the abyss. 

"Gray heads for wisdom:" ripeness comes of 
time. 

Carlyle knows now — that order is no crime, 
And dreamers' worlds may be far worse than this. 



19. 



And he has words for wise authority— 
The bar divine that shuts the wicked in; 
Proclaims irreverence the deadly sin — 

A soulless tyrant "The Majority." 



A Library Ramble. I I I 

Alas! that some, who, following his banner, 

Have passed for thinkers, through long-punished 

years, 
Should be but mighty mouthers with long ears, 

Whose chiefest weight is in their heavy manner. 



There's many a book of marvellous pretences. 
That yet is nothing but a slender joke — 
A little daisy mimicking the oak — 

Crreat in the strength one drop of rain condenses. 

In Emerson, for instance, we shall find 
A juicelessness, reminding of a drum, 
Or, pre-historic bug — the genus, Hum — 

Entomolite — that rattles to the wind. 



Except in " English Traits." There are some pages 
Of unexpected pith, well worth the reading — 
The author's Pegasus in quiet leading. 

And not cavorting through Berserkir rages. 

The horse divine has rarely much of spirit, 
But is as Clavileno, tame and quiet : 



112 A Library Ramble. 

Your Quixotes only undertake to fly it, 
But men of sense pace on the ground, or near it. 



For, after all, our horizon is bounded 

By the same visual rim of sky and plain. 

To each, alike, the sunlight, wind, and rain, 
And incident by which the life is rounded. 
The wisest, like the weakest, can but tell 

Of what he sees, and hears, and feels, and wishes. 

A whale is but a fish with other fishes, 
Ii^v'n if he blow and try to be a swell. 

23- 

Give him due credit who can sing most sweetly, 

Or say the noblest things of actual life; 

And name him '"Sage," whose clear, wise words 
are rife 
With what transfigures Duty most completely. 
Eut shun the wretch who wriggles, writhes, and 
squirms, 

Through High Dutch fogs in ludicrous contortion. 

You're not required to pity his abortion, 
Though you may send him vermifuge for worms. 



^4 Librarx Ramble 



24. 



Up goes Carlyle. And now the dubious eye 
Sees volumes labelled, "Dickens." He is one, 
Who, in his own way, useful work has done. 

Reminding us that squalid poverty 

Is human, like ourselves. Is not this all? 
He is one-sided, narrow; never drew 
A mannered man, a model fine and true. 

But throned his seedy heroes at the Hall. 

25. 

Ev'n dear old Thackeray is sometimes tedious, 

Surrendering art to a poor dismal sneer. 

Yet he for tenderness scarce has a peer. 
Albeit he seem a misanthrope egregious. 
Does he lack reverence ? Pass the fault in sorrow ; 

It is the woe of all this latter time. 

He hated shams, loved manhood that is prime. 
And fought his day to glorify its morrow. 

26. 

God give him rest and rank among the angels; 
The meed of one who batdes well and long ; 
9 



114 --i Library Rambk. 

Who never cheats our hope with herald song, 
Nor utters sounding lies for true evangels. 
And might his mantle, wir)' Curtis warming, 
Hatch Potiphars and Pashas fast as chickens, 
We'd cry ''Encore!" Too long the oldest Dickens 
In social life has ceased to be alarming. 

27. 

And yet this Curtis seems a twist too loose — 
•Facing, like Tilton, the "strong-minded" way; 
Clamoring for "Woman's Rights;" which is to say, 

Her right to be a gander yet a goose; 

Her right to vote, hold office, play the scold 
On platforms, or select a separate father 
For every child she has, and without bother 

Divorce him, and be common, foul, and bold. 

58. 

All which, to men who love their wqves and 
daughters. 
And reverence womanhood as something pure, 
And toil, that home and wedlock may endure, 

Savors of hell. Far better stolen waters, 



A Library RiDtiblc. I 1 5 

Than licensed prostitution. Let there be 
An interval of during breadth between 
Public corruption and a woman clean, 

Wide as a continent from sea to sea. 

29. 

The woman— is she better than the man 

By nature? She is pure from her seclusion, 
As rooms are tidiest where is least intrusion; 

For ev'n the worst of us leave what we can 

Of coarse rank incident and slimy thought 
Outside the doors, that shelter from the street 
Our loved ones. Push them forth to meet 

All vileness, some infection must be caught. 

30- 

Trollope and Collins — every book well finished — 
Look down invitingly — are hard to pass. 
Then, subtle Hawthorne— none shall him surpass, 

And bid us hunt his mighty shade diminished. 

Next, Bulwer— poet, novelist, and scholar — 
Proteus returned from the far mythic caves, 
Where he had idled 'neath Egyptian waves, 

While dusty centuries yoked in modern collar. 



I I 6 A Library Ramble. 

31- 

Close by Macaulay, fertile of romances. 

Why he has been so worshipped, is a mystery. 

His fictions so pervert plain English history, 
That one knows less, the further he advances 
Along the rhetoric rubble of fine pages. 

Were words authority, we might suppose 

Dutch William less a cabbage than a rose, 
And England's kingliest soul in all the ages. 



Yonder, in bulky volumes, Walter Scott. 

If one w^ould read good novels, whose are better \ 
Manly and high in tone, and chaste in letter, 

And little there the best could wish were not. 

His gentle-folk are of the well-bred caste : 
His boot-blacks never play too large a part : 
Lord of proportion, his consummate art 

Has summoned a procession, from the past. 

Of kings, ([ueens, nobles, commoners, and thralls, 
Knights, palmers, priests, monks, jews — a world 
complete — 



A Library Ramble, I I 7 

A semi-Gothic world — dim, sacred, sweet, 
Lit by the weird Hght that on fay-land falls. 
If Shakspeare have a peer, it is Sir Walter; 

In scope of genius, no two draw so near. 

They sought like subjects; both are wise and 
clear; 
And we would build to them a common altar. 

34. 

Cooper, our novelistic pioneer, 

And Southland Simms, deserve most reverent 
mention. 

And Poe will have the student's close attention, 
For twice, in time, his kind do not appear. 
John Ruskin will have following: he is master 

Of noble English, and a mine of thought 

In grand old mountains and cathedrals wrought; 
And he's as orthodox as one's own pastor. 

35- 

Of vain philosophy, we've read enough — 

Buckle, and Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, 
And many another dreamer and dispenser 

Of thin materialism and wordy stuff. 



I 1 8 A Library Ramble. 

A chap who votes to follow just his nose, 
And hold what reason teaches, and no more. 
Against the powers above him shuts the door. 

And leaves his soul as earth-bound as his toes. 

36. 

One school of metaphysics, and but one, 

Yields common sense. Of course, the Scotch is 

meant. 
Reid is its father; Mansel lately lent 
It lustre; but its pride is Hamilton. 
In the vast sea of thought through which they 
sailed, 
'Tis sometimes well to follow with light oar, 
Where, under cool, bright heavens, lies many a 
shore. 
From feebler sight impenetrably veiled. 

37. 

But now before us looms a Boston name — 
Theodore Parker! Liberal worthy, he, 
Who strove a downright Antichrist to be, 

Nor ever guessed his impudence and shame 1 



A Library Ramble. I 1 9 

His is the type of all the " Hberal" mind: 

His dead hand guides New England thought to- 
day : 
His warlike soul has never gone away, 

But wreaking ruin, lingers long behind. 

38. 

We seek in vain, among the Yankee writers, 
For a clean humorist* of gentle will — 
A smiling spirit, bright, and kind, and still : 

But most are controversialists and fighters. 

Mail-clad in stinging wit. Few have right humor: 
They bully us forever with a smartness; 
Their women plague our temper by their tartness, 

Seeming to think their readers are a tumor 

39- . 

That needs perpetual pricking. But to-day 
Let them be out of mind; for as we turn. 



* New England unqiiestionaoly has humorists enough of a cer- 
tain kind. Men of the Josh Billings type are to be found there-- 
men, too, of the O. W. Holmes type, whose sentences frequently 
read as if he thought they should be closed with double or triple 
admiration points. But of that refined and unfailing pleasantry, 
that courteous, elegant, and dignified humor, that blooms all over 
Irving, what has New England to show? 



I 20 A Library Ramble. 

We see the books of Irvinu;. We may learn 
Of him, to bring our better natures into play. . 
Genial he is — a humorist as fine, 

As ever with an artist's cunning spun 
Commingled webs of pathos and of fun, 
And drew heaven's tears or sunshine through each 
line. 

40. 

He feels no bitterness: he deals no blow: 
He has no enemies, but all men love him ; 
And few would see another sit above him 

On fame's clear height, within the Olympian glow. 

There, let him reign while Time his shuttle throws, 
And gain in peaceful souls increasing favor, 
Flavorino; their thous^ht with his sweet, human 
flavor. 

We draw the Sketch Book: and with that, we close. 



A TALE OF THE JESUIT MISSIONS. 



/^HAMPAIGNE was the land of Louis d'Aille- 
boust, 

And Barbe de Bologne was a maiden there. 
He was a soldier, and came to woo; 

And the brave, says Dryden, deserve the fair. 

But the maid Avas coy, though she loved the youth, 

And longed his earthly mate to be; 
For to Holy Church she had pledged her truth 

1 o be ever enamored of chastitee. 

Yet when she learned that his sword he wore 
In the cause of Mary and not for strife, 

She yielded her hand, but nothing more; 
She wedded in name, but was not a wife. 



^^J^oTE.— See Parknian's Jesuits in North America, pa^es 264 and 



12 2 A Tale of the Jesuit Missions. 

In her father's house, a virgin pure, 

She phed her needle, or told her beads, 

And never a nun was more secure 

From sinful thoughts and tender needs. 

Ere long d'Ailleboust, for the faith's advance. 
To the Jesuit Missions gave his sword; 

And turning away from the fields of France, 
Begged Barbe go with him, a saint adored. 

But his maiden spouse repelled his prayer, 
And coldly heard when he strove to speak ; 

For to honor her vow was her pious care, 

And, v/hat if the will of the man were weak! 

Then sickness came; but ere pulse beat right, 

Awhile she lay in a happy trance. 
And a vision rose, on her inner sight. 

That summoned her forth from the ease of France. 

And she joined d'Ailleboust, and over the foam 
The rude wind blew, and the frail bark bore. 

Till far behind were the hills of home, 
And the wilds of Canada loomed before. 



A Tale of the Jesuit Missions. I 2 3 

But through sea-sickness, or while they sped 
On a way unknown till the goal was won, 

No word of love had been wrongly said, 
No look of love had a vow undone. 

And onward thence from year to year, 

While birds were mated and rose leaves blown. 

While moons were merry, or months were drear, 
They dwelt together, yet lived alone. 

From honor to honor d'Ailleboust arose. 
With good sword carving his speedy way. 

Till he gained the summit whence honor flows. 
For the whole broad province confessed his sway. 

And Barbe at home received each guest. 
Or found her pleasure in alms and prayer; 

But never a babe besieged her breast. 

Or filled her thought with an earthly care. 

Like a nun she came, and went, and came, 
A soul too fair in her husband's eyes 

To sully with passion that burns like flame — 
A moment burns, and as quickly dies. 



124 ^ Talc of the Jesuit Missions. 

And though he longed, as his greatness grew, 
For children to prattle around his knee. 

The worth of a vow that is kept, he knew, 
Was more to Barbe than a child could be. 

They dwelt together, yet far apart. 

They loved, but their love was like the snow. 
A veil, fate-woven, hung round each heart. 

And what was hidden they dared not know. 

To souls thus living death brought no fears. 

They died, and death was the end of pain. 
Now, over their graves two hundred years 

Have poured the treasures of sun and rain. 

And, musing, I think in the life above. 
Where vows that hinder must disappear, 

They fear no longer, but tell their love. 
And dwell together more fond than here. 



SUNSET AND NIGHT. 



" I ^HE low, far sunset lingers in the mist. 

The sinuous river glimmers on the plain. 
The umber woodlands, by faint, warm winds kissed, 
Nod drowsily to drowsier fields of grain. 

A single bird is skimming through the haze. 

A cowboy's whistle drones from flats afar. 
A maiden at her window stands to gaze, 

And wait the coming of the evening star. 

Nor long she waits : the slow descending sun 
Touches the rim of earth's remotest hill, 

And, like a monarch when his reign is done, 
Withdraws his faded light, and all is still. 



12 6 Sunset and Al'ght. 

Now, hanging low within the holy height, 
The timid crescent beams with virgin eye, 

And many a window gleams upon the night, 
And shadowy forms go slowly wandering by. 

But she — the maiden — yet in silence stands. 
And views the crescent and eve's Hquid star, 

The farm-house lights amid the lonely lands, 
The passing forms that scarce the stillness mar. 

Not yet to her has come the dreamy time 

Of blushing love, when vows are whisj^ered low, 

Not yet her prince has left his native clime. 
Or if he comes, his path he does not know. 

Perchance she thinks ' ' He too sees yonder moon ; 

He too beholds the love-light of the star; 
The faint winds soothe him with their pleasant tune, 

And give him strength to journey from afar." 

Perchance she thinks how she will meet his gaze 
When first she finds him standing at her side; 

How give her hand; how pass the after-days, 
And not outgrow the honors of a bride. 



Sunset and A7g/i/. I 2 7 

But now she turns; the moon and star have set, 
Where sank the sun behind the gloomy hill. 

The murmuring airs seem hollow with regret; 
The night grows dense; the formless street is chill. 

She turns; her curtain falls; but sudden light 
Comes flaming through it to the outer air; 

And, pictured on the fair and stainless white, 
I see a kneeling figure bowed in prayer. 

God shield her well; for she has perfect trust 
The long illusion of the 'years to meet. 

But ah! She wears this troubled frame of dust, 
And many a snare is waiting for her feet. 

God shield her well; and shield us all; for deep 
The darkness that on every pathway lies. 

And when, toil-worn, we sink at last to sleep. 
Safe be the rest that seals our heavy eyes. 



DEAD LEAVES. 



" I ^HE dead leaves whirl before the blast 

Of the rude Autumn's breath. 
Ah, whither do they fly so fast — " 
Unresting even in death ? 
The sisters of the mouldering grass — ■ 
Pale troops of summer's slain, alas! 

For them but shrouds of snow. 
When Spring this way again shall pass. 
New leaves the trees shall overflow 
To whisper with the dallying airs; 
But what dark fate for these prepares, 
What heart shall care to know ? 



INVITATION— IN MORTE. 



/^OME with me: my little boat 
Fearlessly an ocean rides. 

Sit beside me: we will float 

O'er the lone and pathless tides, 
Safely as a cygnet glides. 

Silver-streaming is the light: 
Rose and silver is the sea: 

It is neither day nor night: 

Does the air seem chill to thee? 
Ah, it is not so to me. 

Closer draw if you are cold; 
Let me warm you with a kiss; 

Clinging round you, I will hold 
Till we reach some land of bliss 
Where we shall not pine for this. 



130 Past Sill. 

Where no face grows wan with death, 
And no rapture mates with woe : 

Where the summer's spicy breath 
Ever breathes a music low — 
Sweet that land — O let us go. 



PAST SIN. 



A/'OU will not care to know how deep my sin, 

When bared by Judgmerft Day; 
Nor if in my weak heart it did begin, 

Or with another lay. 
Enough 'twill be if w^e safe heaven win, 

And Christ take sin away. 



THE SUMMER FLOWERS. 



O AW ye, in yonder meadows 

A band of maidens fair, 
Dancing, and tossing perfume 
High on the shining air? 

No! we saw not those maidens: 
Their dancing days have fled : 

The frosts are in the meadows— 
The summer flowers are. dead. 



WITH APRIL WINDS. 



/. 



/^"^ FICKLE winds of the Spring, 

That dally with new-born leaves. 
Or flutter the dripping wing 

Of the mournful April eves, 
Are you free, or sent, or driven? 

Are you happy, or cursed with care? 
For your tones seem partly of heaven, 

And partly of wild despair. 

The Winds. 

We are sent from skyward stations, 
Where in God we had our birth. 

To plead with the heedless nations 
That live for a dav on earth. 



With April IVinds. I 

For the future, we have warnings; 

For the past, funereal staves : 
From the land of sun-bright mornings 

We call to the land of graves. 

/. 

O prophet winds of Spring, 

If such are your dismal powers, 
Why pause to whisper and sing 

With the short-li\-ed leaves and flowers? 
Why woo us to hope, and dream. 

And sun in the golden ray ] 
Rather roar, and thunder, and scream. 

Or wail to warn us away. 

The TFi//ds. 

We come as the great God sends us. 

In ripple, or wail, or blight. 
The sweetness we whisper, He lends us : 

We roar in the strength of His might. 
But most, when the storm-time passes, 

We love to linger and play. 
And sing to the graves in the grasses. 

Where the dead sleep the hours away. 



AN AUTUMN THOUGHT. 



"T^HE nesting days are over, 

And, empty on the bought 
To every wind of autumn 

The nest is swaying now. 
There, late, in pensive quiet. 

The old birds sat alone ; 
But frosts portend the winter. 

And all the birds have flown. 

O love, our home is pleasant. 

And as the summer bright; 
But smiles, and songs of children, 

Are more than warmth and light. 
We find our sweetest pleasures, 

We know our deepest cares. 
In sharing little pastimes, 

In teaching little prayers. 



An Autumn TJwught. I 35 

But swift the years are flying; 

All life is outward bound; 
And we, beneath this shelter, 

Must by a day be found 
Together stilly sitting 

Like old birds in their nest, 
Our young ones finding elsewhere 

Their life-work and their rest. 

And further on — if further — 

Strange feet will tread these floors, 
And other hands be lifted 

To close these friendly doors; 
And other songs be sung here. 

And other prayers be said, 
While we, like birds of passage, 

On airy ways have fled. 

Ah ! happy, if departing 

From day to constant day, 
No hope is idly shattered. 

No love-bond torn away: 
If honest joys that offer 

Are seized ere taking wing, 



An AutuDin Thought. 

And time, and change, and partin< 
Leave no unnatural sting. 

But God forbid that ever, 

In wintriness of soul, 
We hear, for vain repentance, 

Death-bells behind us toll. 
O sad is age that Imgers 

Amid the mounded past. 
Around whose onward footsteps 

Dead leaves alone are cast. 



AD THOMAM CARLYLE. 



" Alas ! While the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages everywhere, 
what can I do with the Homers r I want Achilleus and Odysseus, 
and am er. raged to see them trying to be Homers." 

—Life of Stirling. 

"A good, wise, earnest piece in prose from you would please me 
more than the musicalle^t verses would."— i^^^^;- to Dr. Bennett. 



/^ THOMAS, should all men be oxen 

To drag at the heavy plow, 
Or hook with sharp horns at the ages, 
Even as thou '? 

Should each be a Thor, with a hammer, 
To crumble the rocks into dust — 

Threshing and pounding about him 
With furious lust? 



138 Ad Thoniam Carlyle. 

Should each be a grim gladiator, 
With fists in his fellow's face? 
Or a mouse-eyed attorney, forever 
Working a case? 

Would you banish the birds out of heaven- 
The birds with their twittering songs — 

And call their songs idle, and class them 
With follies and wrongs? 

Would you silence the drone of the insect- 
The hum of the bee in a bower — • 

And hear but the booming of battle. 
The shaking of power? 

Is the thundering avalanche sweeter 
Than snow that drops gentlier down \ 

Or skies that are bluest, less useful 
Than skies that frown ? 

O Thomas, the thing that is lightest 
Has ever some adequate place; 

In nature and spirit is room for 
Both grandeur and grace: — 



Ad Thomam Carhie. I 39 

Is room for the stern and the awful — 

Destruction, and effort, and strife. 
And the ways that are gentlest, and lend all 

The beauty to life. 

The mountain requireth the eagle : 
The song bird belongs to the bower: 

And some things are made for pleasure, 
And some for power. 

The manfullest hero and fighter 

Rushes on to the battle with song : 

And the music that lilts by measure 
Makes him more strong: 

It strengthens the heart of the weaker : 
. It thickens the blood and the breath : 
He grows to be heedless of danger — 
Heedless of death. 

He sees not the carnage about him : 
He thinks not of children and wife : 

He cries out "Now Forward!" and falls at 
The front of the strife. 



140 Ad Thorn am Carlyk. 

And long shall his widow remember: 
And long shall his children lament: 

Yet deem not his loss untimely — 
His blood ill spent, 

When the ballad recites his story, 
And honors his name with praise — . 

Inflaming the hearts of others 
To patriot ways. 

O Thomas, this world would be crabbed- 
Be dreary, and lonely, and hard, 

Were lute-strings broken, and silenced 
The song of the Bard. 

The ideal would fade out of longing: 
The chivalry pass from our lives; 

And vulgar become the kisses 
Of sisters and wives. 

Not much would be left to soften 

Their pain who pass under the rod — 

Not much to lift up the spirit 
In praise of God. 



Ad TJiomam Carlyle. 141 

For song is the clearest expression 

Of action, and effort's increase — 
'Tis the voice of patience and sorrow — 

The voice of peace. 

'Tis the breath of summer and winter — 
The strength and the sweetness of time — 

Adapted to things the smallest, 
And things sublime. 

And ever, I think it will gladden 

The life of those rolling spheres. 
Where duration may not be measured 

By days and years : 

But where, because things around us 

Are chiming and changing alway. 
We shall know that the sacred ages 

Slow glide away. 



LET THE STORM RACxE. 



T ET the storm rage, for we are safely shielded: 
Warm is the room, and cheerful glows the fire. 
Roar fierce Euroclydon : thy might is yielded 
But to be used : roar on, and do not tire. 

Roar, rage, and dash against the shaking windows, 
And pile the fine white snow till paths are lost. 

'Tis pleasant as the summer here within doors; 
We do not feel thy fury and thy frost. 

But stay! Come sofdy! Yonder in their hovel 
Are my poor neighbor, wife, and children three. 

Alas, that human hearts should have to grovel 
Amid such constant toil and misery. 



Let the Storm Rage. ^'43 

Brave blasts, I pray you be a little kinder, 
For there is suffering in that house I fear; 

And paths' along the wild are growing blinder, 
So freezing men know not which way to steer. 

And out in open places are the cattle 

With backs turned to the tempest; but their eyes 

Are full of icy tears. Ah, fierce the battle 
To keep alive, and many a weak one dies. 

O God, that storms must rage, and life be smitten, 
And all but few find time one lingering pain I 

Where is that better country where men sit in 
Unclouded joy, and suffer not again \ 

Where is that region, where we need not pity 

The patient freezing cattle any more % 

Where is that blest and safe eternal city? 

Help all to find it, for the need is sore. 



A PRELUDE. 



T)ETTER a Bonaparte than a vile Communist I 

Better one despot than many, say I! 
Yea, better that peace forever be missed; 

That men in armies be driven to die, 

And wives be widowed, and orphans cry 
In the boreal blasts and the shelterless street, 
With haggard faces and frozen feet, 
Than the imps of hell hold revel and dance 
As twice they have done in the blood of France. 
For never since daughters of men gave birth 

To broods perditioned that died by flood, 
Have days and nights so plagued the earth 

With sights of ruin to freeze the blood, 



A Prelude. 1 45 

As wlien the Commune was king of old, 
And Reason, a harlot, was goddess bold, 
And the Sa?is Culottes to the guillotine 
Dragged priest, and noble, and woman clean. 
And the Loire ran red, and the Seine, and the 

Rhone, 
And fleshly hearts were as hearts of stone. 



II. 



Those days were numbered, ah ! not with the dead. 

The fiends were balked, but did not forget. 
Long biding their time more blood to shed. 

AVith tear-dew still men's eyes are wet 

For the tragic horror of La Roquette; 
For the lives that ended in martyr deaths; 

For the city burned that was great and fair; 
For the poisonous and inhuman breaths 

That cried "Revenge!" to the shrinking air. 
Again has Reason put forth her power; 
Again the Christian been made to cower. 
And homes been plundered, and graves been fed, 
And maids been ravished who should be wed. 



146 A Prelude. 

III. 

When the firm earth quivers and moans with pain, 

We know that fires in the depths below, 
Are striving some vent of their rage to gain; 

And clouds, that under the blue heaven flow, 

One day must break in storms, we know. 
Perchance to ruin the whole year's gain. 
But the clouds of thought bear a coming storm; 
And the earth with mutinous heat is warm, 
For the hordes of darkness are eager to form, 

And sweep the gain of the ages away. 
We hear them stir in hovel and den, 
We know the skill of their tireless pen, 

In pulpits and senates they have their say. 
Unnerving the thought of the strongest men. 
"Begotten of apes!" is their shameless cry. 
And ruled by Reason they live and die 

As apes-begotten that scoff at prayer. 
But when beasts are loose, beware of the chance I 

When Reason is worshipped, I think it fair 
To turn the page that she made for France. 



DESILLUSIONE. 



npHE blue-eye has fled from the clover: 

The passion is gone from the rose: 
The legends of morning are over : 

The night the same stars will unclose. 
The bird sings — I scarcely now hear it — 

The bee-hives hum under the wall, 
And I say in my practical spirit, 

"We'll have honey to eat in the Fall." 

I look at the mountain; no longer 

Its azure the Oread hides: 
But nymphs that are coarser belong there, 

Mules — braying all over its sides. 
And the stream that is flashing, and brawling, 

And racing away at its will. 
Seems to *me to be ever calling 

For a dam and the wheel of a mill. 



1 48 Dcsilliisiouc. 

Our maids were once fawn-eyed and pretty : 

They floated like doves through the air: 
And sunshine enough for a city 

Lay tangled and soft in their hair. 
But to-day I'm unable to see it : 

Taste cavils, grown harder to please. 
Sure the fates that are cruel decree it, 

Tor, of all things, the fairest were these. 

Seldom now does the west wind come singing 

It moans; it wails; or it shrieks. 
The cloud may be pestilence bringing: 

The lightning may leap from its peaks. 
I shrink from the grandeur of ocean — 

Men sleep in its bottomless brine; 
And the wavelets in treacherous motion 

Seem as serpents that struggle and twine. 

Which is better : the way I now see things— 

This bare, unmistakable truth. 
Or the dainty illusions and glee-things, 

That fooled and sweetened my youth? 
Is it better to come to my table 

Dyspeptic and practical-eyed. 



Desillusione. 1 49 

Or to live in a moon-land of fable, 
And eat like the boy at my side? 

No doubt, on the whole, it were better 

If wisdom could pleasure enhance. 
But if time makes romance a dead letter, 

Perish time ! Live forever romance ! 
Come back then, my youth, let me bind you 

To vision, opinion, and heart: 
Or let me go forward and find you 

Where nature is stronger than art. 



MUD PIES. 



T3EHIND the house, *a play-ground 

For the Httle children lies; 
And there, they are noisy and busy, 
Making mud j^ies. 



I sit at an open window. 
Watching their serious play. 

And smile at the deep illusion 
Of all they say. 

For one insists that her way 
Is better than all the rest; 

But others, who do much like her. 
Call their way best. 



Mud Fics. I 5 1 

And my mind, from the scene before me, 
Goes out to the world of men; 

To the things that are, and ever 
Shall be again. 

Till I wonder, if angels viewing 
The marvellous ways of earth — 

The schemes and the anxious efforts — 
Ne'er feel like mirth. 

If when we struggle and travail, 
And deem ourselves most wise, 

They smile not, and call us children 
Making mud pies. 



INFLUENCE OF ANIMATE THINGS. 



T TERE, from my window, I can see 
The cattle in the meadows stand, 
And children running merrily — 
A distant, lovely band. 

They cannot feel my steady gaze : 

They could not miss it, were it gone. 

Their ways are just their natural ways, 
As if no eye looked on. 

Yet they to me are something more 
Than puppets painted on the air — 

They fill the landscape with high lore. 
Because they make it fair. 



Influence of Animate Things. 153 

They animate what else were hard. 

They make things fettered seem more free. 
They give its meaning to the sward, 

The flower, the stream, the tree. 

And though, to them, I am as nought, 

And they to me are Httle more. 
The sight of them has made my thought 

Some brighter than before. 

And not the humblest thing that lives, 
But fills what elsewise were a void; 

Breaks long monotonies, and gives 
An influence heaven-employed. 

God made it for some human gain, 

To modify the world's vast tone : 
The sight of it makes pain less pain. 

Makes loneliness less lone. 



THE COMING MAN. 



^T^HE heavens, to-day, infold the Coming Man, 

The happy heavens, made happy that He sits 
Sceptred and throned in Godhead majesty. 
But yet a little while, a few more years 
Of pompous mental beggary and rant — 
A few more years, lapsing from bad to worst — 
Deceivers waxing bolder, marring faith 
By vain philosophies and meddling schemes 
Humanitarian, and He will come; 
The Coming Man will come, in Godhead might, 
To rescue friends hard pressed by endless shams 
Of loud, vain-glorious reason, and by swords 
That do the bidding of the Pagan State. 
For he is not in league with Positivism; 
Is no materialist; but like a child 
Full of all meek and wise simplicity. 



The Coming Man. 155 

He gave a i)erfect system once for all, 
And waits to see its working; waits to see 
Who will be friends with Him and who will not. 
Ere long He comes — The Coming Man — He comes, 
And all shall see him standing on His Throne, 
And heaven before Him flying. Then shall be 
A cry to rocks and mountains, "Give us room 
For hiding! Shield us from the face of Him, 
Who sits upon the throne!" For there will be 
Terror beyond the frames of speech; and death 
Will roar in havoc while the earth dissolves. 
But ye, O faithful band, who longing wait 
The second coming of The Coming Man, 
In patience shall ye not abide the time? 
He Cometh quickly ! Let the world go wild 
With speech and plan so radical that all 
May see hell's grizzly commune underneath: 
This have the prophets told. But when these days. 
These darkening days, have dragged their length 

to blood. 
When some have won the martyr's jeweled crown, 
Look up! Be glad! for o'er the hills of earth, 
With speedy succor, and with sword on thigh, 
Shall once again be seen The Coming Man. 



THE CEMETERY. 



'T^HIS is the burial place — 

This bit of ground — 
For the populous district 

Lying around. 
And here all the people 

Are steadily bound. 

Each day they come nearer. 

Each year, as it goes 
Destructive and heedless 

Of wishes and woes, 
Brings many to find here — 

Rest is it — Who knows? 

Some boldly accord them 

A satisfied lot — 
The pious, the lovely, 



The Cemetery. I 5 7 

The pimp and the sot — 
This one thing is certain, 
They soon are forgot. 

What secrets are laid here : 

What loneness, what pain; 
What bruising and heart-break 

That find death is gain ; 
What mahce, what envy, 

What flippancy vain. 

The worldling behind him 

Has left fame and gold; 
The rake and the harlot 

No more may be bold — 
Crime and its victims 

Together are cold. 

The young maid that dreamed 

Of her love as she died; 
The orphan, dismayed 

That the world is so wide; 
The clown and the scholar 

Are pent side by side — 



158 The Canctery. 

Pent low on one level — 
The great as the small — 

With sad upturned faces, 
And ears deaf to call; 

The darkness, and silence, 
And mold over all. 

The long years move onward 

With indolent feet; 
The lone moonlight shivers; 

The spectral rains beat; 
The wind wildly rages, 

Or croons low and sweet; 

And death holds them locked 

In a seeming content, 
As days that are soundless 

When rough gales are spent- 
Unknowing, unknown of. 
Till graves shall be rent. 

But when by the living, 

And when by the dead. 
The roar of the trumpet 



The Cemetery. I 59 



Is heard overhead; 
And all then here hidden 
Shall rise from their bed, 

What sights must astonish 
The flame-hghted air: 

What splendor, what beauty, 
What pain, what despair— 

Oh, God, who can bear it!- 
Yet all must be there. 



FUNERAL PAGEANTS. 



/^OULD we but lift the awful veil that hides 

The endless future from our heedless eyes, 
Could we but see where Baalam now abides, 

Where Dives moans, where Ananias sighs, 
And could we know the fate that many meet 

Whom the world honors with its brightest bays, 
Would long funereal trains trail through the street 

And panegyric flaunt the public ways'? 

Or, would we steal in horror to the tomb. 

And leave our burden to its sad unrest. 
Grieving to think that one has earned a doom 

As wholly changeless as it is unblesf? 
Yet well we know, that many live in vain. 

Whom honors crown but never can appal. 
Since if to them be given heav'n to gain, 

Heav'n is a hell, and not a heav'n at all. 



THE SEA. 



I. 



/^NCE — it was long ago — 

While the noon shed out of the clouds 
A tremulous, misty light, 
And afar on a hill of the cape — 
Wan, weird, and lofty, and still, 
Stood a slanting pillar of rain, 
With the haste of my feet, I came 
Through a valley, that wandered and wound, 
In meadow, and marshland, and moss. 
And there was the Sea — The- Sea! 

12 



I 62 The Sea. 



II. 



Gray, limitless, rolling away 

Into distance, far mantled by dull, 

Cold skies, it lay; and whether 

Those slow, monotonous tides 

Ran, infinite, on into heaven 

With the grandeur and trouble of earth, 

Or, far in the fathomless depths, 

The base of the dome of heaven 

Were low as the springs of the sea, 

No vision of man could divine. 

But heaven and the sea were seen 

Interfused, interlocked, and as one — 

Vast, mingled in struggle and strength. . 



III. 



Then I seized on a shallop that lay 
Half afloat, on the loose yellow sand, 
And pushed it, and wrought at the oar, 
On the top of the billows that ran 
In ridges! but ever I paused 
To study some huge craft, that fled 



The Sea. I 6 

Full-sailed, showing spectral and dark; 
Growing spectrally dimmer it fled; 
Till, at length, it stood on the verge 
Of some outmost convex wall — 
The weltering crest of the waves: 
Till it stood on the sea and the sky — 
A moment immovably stood. 
As, doubtful in which were its path; 
Then passed down the seaward slope — 
Slow passed; lifting up to my eyes 
A hand-breadth of shadowy sail, 
Like a signal put up for- relief 
By a drowning crew, or by one, 
Who, parting from all that he loves, 
Would utter "Farewell" to the last. 

So drifting, I came to an isle 
Far out in the sea. Around it. 
White flocks of gulls sailed screaming. 
Its low, sallow coast was piled 
AVith tangled green lilies and fern, 
Dragged up from the depths of the sea; 
From gardens of exquisite bloom ; 
From vales that are green all the year; 
Where lie in a glimmering light. 



I 64 TJie Sea. 

'Mid mosses, and lilies, and fern, 
'Mid treasures of gold and of shells, 
The dead whom the waves have engulfed 
And hold to the end. And I heard, 
While I thought of the dead, a sigh — 
An infinite sigh of the sea, — 
Rising up from the breast of the waves; 
And the plash, on the sandy shore. 
Seemed the sob of a soul that feels. 



IV. 



Then 1 clambered high up on a bank. 
By a fisherman's hut. There I found 
A rude seat that fronted the sea: 
And the clouds broke away from the west. 
And the sun came down to the mouth 
Of the sea with a kiss. Then I looked 
On the face of the sea. How it shone ! 
How it triumphed, all glittering with smiles ! 
But, in twilight, its .splendor transformed, 
Faded, mantled with gloom, and became 
Dark blue as the lips of the dead. 
And capped by the flut'Cring foam 



The Sea. 165 

That lifts like the fingers of one 

Going down to the roots of the world. 

In the echoless air, its voice 

Was lone as the prayer that is breathed 

At the grave of a young pure child — 

An infinite measure of death. 

But while, in my chilly sense, 

The horror grew fast, a star — ' 

A tremulous star stole out 

From the fathomless depths of heaven, 

Where the clouds were cloven. It stood 

Serene — a spirit of peace — 

And looked on the depths of the sea ; 

On the purple, lustreless waves, 

Slow-moving, unresting, and bound 

Without definite aim, anywhere, 

Everywhere — surely afar. 

And I thought, as the rays of the star 

Came down on the aimless waves, 

*'Thus the blind, dark masses that move 

In the human tide of the world, 

Are spent in dull, wandering ways. 

Unknown, well-forgotten, we die. 

Fate-driven, far-bound, our lot 



I 66 The Sea. 

Would be but a horror of death, 
Did a star not shine up in heaven 
To Hght us — the lode-star of faith.' 



But a wind came forth in the night, 

And the sun, in the morn, looked up 

Over mountainous billows. In anger, 

The sea smote its barrier of sand. 

While the coast, down long-stretching leagues. 

Loud roared with the rage of the storm. 

In might came the sea; in thunder 

And shipwreck it came; leaping up 

On the heights of the land, with cry 

Of havoc and ruin; and men, 

Who from infancy played with spray 

Of the foamy salt on their cheeks. 

Blanched white at its turbulent rage. 

And some who, sailing in ships, 

Were waked from their over-night sleep 

By the frenzy and shock of the sea. 

Went down to the soundless depths. 

Where lie in a mouldering light, 



The Sea. 1 67 

'Mid gardens of lily and fern, 

'Mid gold and musical shells, 

Dead sailors, and men that were mourned, 

Mute matrons, and maidens, and babes, 

In patience awaiting the end 

Far under the blare of the blasts. 

And the maddened billows that broke 

The great ships that sailed on the sea. 



VI. 



O, the sea! those days by the sea! 

The sea with its wide-curving shores, 

Its beauty, its pain, and its might! 

I think of it here, inland far. 

Where the prairies are quiet and soft; 

Where the storm swift passes, and death 

Rides not on the blasts of the gale. 

To me 'tis the emblem of power. 

Of yearning; the hunger we feel 

For something unseen and afar; 

Rolling onward forever to find 

A deathless and happier coast, 

That is hidden — that has not been found 



I 68 The Sea. 

A region of music and light, 

Flower-fragrance, and verdure, and peace. 

But the sea will not find what it seeks, 

If it search to the end — till its streams 

Are shrivelled and molten with fire. 

But I — I shall come in good time 

To the shore that my faith bids me gain, 

Far off, in a land of the soul; 

And look on the stilly sea, 

And sail on the crystaPsea, 

That is bright witMthe glory of God. 



FRAGMENTS. 



I. 



f^ OD bless our sturdy native land — 
^^ Its prairies broad, its mountains bare, 
Its rough, cold lakes, its rivers grand. 

Its pure invigorating air. 
And bless its blue, enfolding seas, 
Its forests, springs and bloomy leas, ' 
And all the powers and influences 
That make this land the land it is. 
For here are nurtured, here alone, 
The tensest muscle, firmest bone ; 
The keenest eye, the sternest will. 
And largest power for good or ill. 



1 70 Fragments. 

II. 

They, quite too often, -are the scum of men — 
The very scum of men, who give us news; 
They find a strange deHght in pubhshing 
The unsavory scandals that disgrace the times — 
Chppings from far and near. The faithless wife, 
The lecherous husband, and the prostitute. 
Are all paraded in close-columned filth. 
With gloating sneers of comment. Scarce a word — 
A piteous word for fallen woman's crime — 
A tear-wet word wrung from a heart that feels, 
E'er glows among their lamp-black chronicles. 
They are the scum of men; and mothers-in-law — 
Those sainted women who have given us wives. 
Helping to make our best affections ripe. 
They speak of with contumely. Such men, 
(No matter what their pride of place and power), 
I loathe; for they misuse their office. 



III. 



All loveless life is a life of sorrow; 

So better, I think, when a bird is slain, 



Fragntents. I 7 1 

That its mate be shot by the self-same arrow, 

And end forever its lonely pain. 
What shall it do, if there come a morrow? 

Hiding away in coverts unseen, 

It must pine in silence, and vainly sigh. 

Holding it precious from joy to wean 
The mateless bosom, the watery eye. 

Not this; not this, be our fate, Pauline! 

IV. 

Ah, not to the finest promise 
Is the fullest flowering blown; 

And not to the sweetest flowering 
Is the amplest fruitage grown; 

And not to the brightest morning 

Is certain unclouded light; 
And not to the day serenest 

The calmest loveliest night. 

And not to the child the fairest. 
Though trained by loving ways. 

Is the certainty of virtue 

Through a happy length of days; 



1/2 Fragments. 

But to him, who from his childhood 
Takes God for his steadfast friend, 

To him is a noble manhood — 
To him is a peaceful end. 



AURELIA 



A FRAGMENT 



PeRSON/K : 

Aiirelia - - A Boston Matron. 

Isabel, 

Chorus, 

IN BOSTON. 

Aurelia. O, snake-haired Gorgon, that with flash- 
ing fangs 
And pitiless lips, blood-wet with lives of men, 
Wanderest from land to land, delighting most 
In populous empires, garnered full of gold, 
And priceless art, and rich results of toil 
And taste, and time; yet not disdaining wastes 
Where men are few, and pass their barren days 



1/4 Aurelia. 

With sheep and camels near some lonely well, 

On the wind-beaten, melancholy breadth 

Of Asian steppes, is there no end — no end 

Is there, O war, to thy insatiate rage? 

The light of ages, streaming on thy path. 

Reveals vast tumuli of fleshless bones, 

By every hill-side, and where vales are fair; 

And every wind is pierced by hollow moans, 

And wandering shrieks, left by thy victims slain 

On fields of howling battle, to alarm 

The conscience of earth's rulers, and abate 

Ambition's tyrannous schemes, and the wild haste 

Of hell's worst fiend. Revenge. Yet dost thou glut. 

From year to year, thy unappeasable lust 

Of human woe, as if the frightful past 

Had not full-fed thy foul, immeasurable gorge 

With steaming blood, and mangled flesh and bones. 

And tears, and sighs, and sudden penury. 

And lewd abominations. Thou dost fume 

With never-lessening frenzy, when a spark 

Kindled in hell is fanned by human hate. 

As if the inevitable, tightening clutch of Death 

Were not upon all heart-strings, and all eyes. 

From natural causes, had not rue enough. 



Aurelia. 175 

Is there no end, O, war? Is there no God 
Left yet aUve in the near heights of heaven, 
To guide the rudderless float of humankind — 
To quench thy vile existence, and enfold 
The hapless nations in the white, still robe 
Of His own peace? Or is He far removed 
From things so small as the autonymous mimes 
That sit in councils and in cabinets, 
Or lift the multitudinous popular voice 
For national honor — honor, that vile word 
That screens, with tinsel, blackest crimes! Alas! 
If God looks on, He seems to acquiesce; 
And proud ambition, plunder, hate, and lust. 
Are motives common to the prince and clown, 
And rule the vital world. Why do we pray? 
Can prayer avert the lightning bolt that cleaves 
The stalwart fir whose music sweetens rest; 
Or turn the earthquake backward on its path; 
Or drown the pestilence in gales of health; 
Or change the nature of the injurious men 
Whose chosen instrument thou art, O, war? 
Peace is not purchased by the bended knee: 
The nations clash together. God is deaf; 
And man is deaf; and wars will never end. 



1/6 Aitrelia. 

CJiorus. 

Up where the isles of hght are shining 

In the deep bkie seas above, 
Are bloomy lands of peace, reclining 

Under a heaven of love. 

There, never thunder, nor cold wind mutters. 

Nor vulture is seen, or heard, 
Nor snaky tongue its venom utters 

In angry or guileful word. 

But white-robed angels, slowly winging 
O'er mountain and lake and plain, 

Are filled with pleasure, and fill with singing 
The lands that echo their strain. 

They fly, they float, through azure golden, 
Through woodland and glen they gleam — 

Strong hearts at last the weak embolden, 
And each has his sinless dream. 

In many mansions undecaying — 

In beautiful homes they dwell, 
"Where little angels are lightly playing. 

Or pausing some tale to tell. 



Aurclia. ^11 

Where graver spirits fill with duty, 

Or give to pleasure, a space; 
Where worship is love, and law is beauty, 

And the Christ in all has place. 

O, seek those lands and homes of glory! 

O, seek the isles of the blest! 
For earth must ever be charred and gory. 

And tossed by a fierce unrest. 

Not here, shall peace unfold her pleasance 

In confident truth to dwell, 
Since over the world goes many a presence 

Ascended from deepest hell. 

Unseen they flit along their stations, 

And stand in the halls of kings. 
And stir to rage the pride of nations 

Till a blood-storm roars and rings. 

Till selfish hearts leave off their boasting. 

And sicken of gain and mirth; 
Till all desire, prayer-sped, goes posting 

To the life beyond our earth. 
13 



lyS Aurclia. 

For never was man but needed urging 

To make him his bane release, 
And heaven wins more by frequent scourging 

Than by all the arts of peace. 

Thus war and tyranny have uses 

Beyond the projects of kings; 
They conquer abuses by abuses, 

And show us the vice of things. 

And hard is earth, yet sweet is heaven, 

And strong is God's arm of love. 
From even to morn, from morn to even, 

Are shining the lights above. 

That men may strive with patient longing 
For the homes where peace has birth, 

Or find at length their true belonging 
With spirits that rule the earth. 

Aufelia. 

What idle voices are these? How thin, and far, 
And like a wandering echo, dying out 
To dreamy, insubstantial nothingness, 



Aurelia. 1 79 

The thought of heaven. Who knows there is a 

heaven % 
Where does it He — in what edipse of space? 
And why should heaven be different from earth — 
One world be better than another world? 
Must it not prove the injustice of great God, 
If it be found some creatures dwell in peace 
Amid the chiming splendors of the spheres, 
Where every thought moves to a perfect act, 
And every act is but a needed tone 
In the great harmony, while all the while 
This baleful earth is populous with hate, 
And miseries illy borne by struggling hearts 
As capable of bliss as those that have it? 
Why is earth, earth ; and why is heaven, heaven ? 

Isabel. 

The fact, Aurelia; look you to the fact. 
This life of earth is such a deathly life, 
So full of poisonous darkness, guilty doubt, 
And biting greed of lust, and gold, and strife; 
So full of body-sickness, and of checks 
Destructive of proportion in our days. 
That in itself it has no real worth. 



1 8o Aui'cUa. 

But yet, its uses are beyond all speech: 

For it has lessons of content and trust; 

Of patience and dependence; aye, of love 

For men who mar with words and blows 

The frame-work of the world. Were earth not 

earth, 
Could heaven be heaven? Were you and I put 

forth. 
Just as we are, amid the heavenly thrones. 
To sully with our passions those fair climes, 
Could there be peace in heaven? Ah, well it is 
That evil men may do their evil work 
Where times are evil; and when all is done. 
When hearts have ready bias to vile ways, 
The justice of God's judgment will be felt, 
Forbidding heaven to them. But they who prove 
Worthy of peace, will find the peace they need. 
Where such as mar the safety of the earth. 
By word, or action, may not come at all. 

Chorus. 
The woman hath well answered. Give her praise \ 



Aurelia. 



Aurelia. 



i8i 



I will not hear this venerable cant— 

This reverend burglary of reason's house, 

For Science now is God, and shall be so. 

The fact: aye, just the fact! I stick by that. 

I own the fact that I can comprehend. 

Each age that tramps along the track of thought 

Makes its own God; and this age, wiser grown 

By knowledge of the folly of the past. 

Stops short with inability to weigh 

And measure. Science now is God— be sure! 

Isabel. 

Science is knowledge. How much can we know 

With certainty] Shall each fall down before 

His Uttle bundle of material facts, 

Or facts historic, doubtful as they are, 

And worship them as God of all the earth? 

Is this a thing to satisfy a soul — 

A living spirit of ideal power? 



POEMS 

1871. 



GRAPING. 



■pwOWN by the dull Cahokia,* 

Just back from a sandy shore, 
You and I went a-graping, 

In the pleasant days of yore. 
We sat in the glancing shadows, 

Or roamed in the open sun; 
But of grapes — alas! my darling — 

We fetched not a single one. 

Our baskets came back empty, 

But our hearts were full of dreams 

Inwrought with the warm October 
And the sunset's mellow beams. 

O sweet through the fading grasses 
Wandered the wind's low moan, 



* A stream in Madison county, Illinois. 



1 8 6 Graping. 

And, piping their cheerful signals, 
Went birds to a summer zone. 

Your hand in my own was resting. 

But few were the words we spoke; 
And our pitiless companions 

Shot at us many a joke. 
But little we cared my darling; 

We had plighted our secret truth, 
And the world seemed a purple vine-land, 

Hung full for the wants of youth. 

Then, ere the leaves had fallen, 

Or cold blew the northern gale — 
Ere the sun swam low in the tropics. 

Or the skies were chilly and pale, 
The villagers all came trooping — 

The greatest as well as the least — 
To hear our vows' confession 

Before the surpliced priest. 

And out through Autumn's glories. 

Or ever the day was done. 
We had crossed broad river and prairie, 

In the track of the hazy sun. 



Graping. I o 7 

And the still night closed around us, 

And Dian smiled bright above 
Our shrine of the perfumed Hymen, 

And the sacrifice of love. 

Oh, swift the years as the passage 

Of pigeons with silvery wings; 
And deep, in their silence, is hidden 

All tender and holy things — 
The smiles, the kisses, the rapture, 

The sighs, the unsealing of tears. 
The darkness that fills with amazement. 

The hght in the west that cheers. 

They are full of children's voices, 

And songs by the cradle sung; 
Of the shadowy gleam of faces — 

Forever fair and young — 
That paled in their opening promise. 

And under the willows hide — 
Ah, Heaven seems far less distant 

Since the little ones have died! 

And once again we are graping. 
But not near the dear old home; 



1 88 G raping. 

New lands are ever unstable — 
Their people like Arabs roam. 

We follow our children westward; 
They will follow theirs to the sea; 

Few men in the land are settled, 

Or know where their graves shall be. 

I like, in the mild October, 

These rides in the country air, 
The plats 'neath the swaying woodlands, 

And the sunlight flickering there. 
I love the merry laughter 

Of the groups at the clustered vine, 
And the glimpse of faces, rosy 

As Moenads flushed with wine. 

For like a wind that freshens 

One drooping, and moving slow, 
These things bring back to my spirit 

The life of the long-ago; 
And I'm proud that these young people, 

Like those of our youthful days, 
Have pleasure in simple pleasures. 

And love the old-fashioned ways. 



Gf'api?ig. 189 

But, for us, the scramble is ended; 

'Tis time to be sober and still; 
We are nearing the mist-covered river — 

Are down at the foot of the hill. 
Our baskets have ever been empty — 

A trifle our slender store; 
Yet only for you and the children 

Have I ever wished for more. 

I hope, when the final summons 

Is sped from the ghostly king, 
Afar, to a peaceful country. 

Together our souls may wing; 
Together may live in glory, 

And round us the children play, 
As once in the long-gone summers, 

Ere some were taken away. 

But now, my arm for the wagon I 

The horses are placed abreast. 
For the home-bound sun is nearing 

His gate in the golden west : 
And the wind, with murmur tender, 

Dies out in a long, long sigh ; 
And the bird to his mate is calling 

That the chill, dark night is nigh. 



THE DEATH OF THE STAG. 



•npHE skies are bright with dewy Hght; 

The gray old peaks are softly glowing; 
The hunter's horn rings on the height, 
And the timid deer, in wild affright. 
Leaps down the valley, where shades of night 
Under rivers of mist are flowing. 

Away below, the fleet hounds go. 

Their music Hke far clarions ringing; 
Away under tree-boughs pendant low. 
Across dim meadows, glimmering slow 
To a hazy dawn, and by curve and flow 
Of a stream in its rock-bed singing. 

Now there, now here — now faint, now clear, 

The echoes of the hunt are flying. 
Too quiet seems this atmosphere 



The Death of the Stag. 1 9 1 

For a skurrying chase of sport and fear; — 
But oh! a ringing shot and cheer, 
And the stag is down and dying. 

A moment dim, the bright hills swim 
Past eyes that gaze with weak endeavor; 

Then darkness fills their azure rim — 

The tepid airs blow chill for him — 

A shudder glances from limb to limb — 
And his flights are done forever. 

But sweet its note, from rhythmic throat, 
The hunter's horn is gayly flying; 

It sails through glens, o'er peaks remote, 

Its silvery echoes backward float 

Soft as Pan's pipe, or pastoral oat. 
Or the west wind's dreamy sighing. 



LONGING. 



'T^HE leaf is yellowing on the tree. 
The grass is fading at my feet; 
The sad wind murmurs from the sea 
Of things that never more shall be, 
And cold and slow the wavelets beat. 

Far off against the sullen cloud 

A misty sail a moment stands, 
Like a pale ghost that in its shroud 
One glimpse of mortals is allowed. 

And then must flit to shadowy lands. 

Oh, sail far-bound across the sea, 

AVould that my fate were hnked with thine; 
That brighter skies these eyes might see, 
And bloom-clad shores, where misery 

Leaves not on heart or brow a hne. 



Lofigifio;. 193 

That I might clasp the pahid hands 

Whose loving pressure thrills me yet; 
Might stand beside her where she stands, 
And wander with her through fair lands, 
And all my solemn cares forget! 



M 



THE FORGOTTEN POET 



''T^IS a ballad from Percy's Reliques, 
Written hundreds of years ago; 
But the head that planned, and the hand that wrote, 
Forgotten, in dust are low. 

The song goes on with the ages. 

And earns well-merited fame; 
But no one asks where the singer lies dead, 

Or seeks to revive his name. 

Yet sweet must have been the spirit 

Could make a song that will live; 
From stores more ample than he can impart, 

Each gives what he has to give. 



The Forgotten Poet. 1 95 

But little, perchance, it matters, 

When anything noble is done, 
That men, admiring, shall speak in praise, 

Or a wreath of bays be won. 

And one who has ended his mission. 

And gone to an honored sleep — 
Oh, what can he care for an empty name, 

That struggles a place to keep \ 

Enough it is for the singer. 

That his song has been well sung ; 
That it lingers to lighten the sorrowful heart, 

Or trips on the cheerful tongue. 

Enough it is for the singer, 

That God, whose singer he is. 
Has given him vision, and strength of speech, 

And filled him with melodies. 

And taken him up some higher. 

Where the singer's harps are gold; 
Where the singing is never ended, and where 

There are none forgotten or old. 



THE UNKiNOWN SAIL 

At Nantucket. 



T^ROM out the indeterminable distance 

There comes a sail, 
That, moving landward — urged by stout persist- 
ence 

Of tide and gale — 

Flies o'er the tract of intervening ocean, 

A stately thing. 
As floats a hawk in heaven without a motion 

Of plume or wing. 

And while we wait to learn her name and story^ 

And what prevails — 
Or haply pleasure, gain, or dream of glory, 

To lift her sails. 



The Unkmmm Sail. 197 

She shifts her course, and, ghding past our island, 

Is swift withdrawn, 
Till her dun topsail looms like some far highland, 

And then is gone. 

But the gray billows, with unceasing motion 

And utterance lone, 
From the deep bosom of the ancient ocean 

(jive back a moan, 

That bodies forth a sense of separation 

None may elude. 
The long monotony and expiration 

Of solitude. 

Thus, on the highways marked by play or duty, 

We come and go, 
And past us eyes that speak, and forms of beauty, 

Ghde to and fro. 

But, while we fain would reach a hand, or utter 

Some word of grace. 
They swiftly pass and leave, with just a flutter. 

An empty space. 



198 The Uuknoivn Sail. 

Vainly we cry, ' ' Who are these — Whence depart- 
ing?" 

And "Whence were they?"' 
Just this is clear: across our pathway starting, 

They speed away. 

And be their lives attractive as their presence, 

Or flushed with shame; 
And be their homes with sorrow or with pleasance^ 

'Tis all the same. 

They are to us henceforth as memories only, 

That dimmer grow : 
As songs that sink to echoes faint and lonely, 

Then cease to flow. 

Or, as the ship that with majestic motion 

Drew near the shore, 
And made no port; but the cold, restless ocean 

Moaned as before. 



INDIAN LOVER'S LAMENT. 



-T-HE summer is here, and the smishine ; 

^ The prairie is sprinkled with flowers; 
The winds through the long grasses murmur, 
The clouds ripple down in bright showers; 
And the birds and the bees are a-singing; 
The youth fly their steeds o'er the plains; 
And lovers for shy nooks are hunting, 
And everywhere happiness reigns. 

Ah, no! I am sick for the maiden 
That wandered here late by my side: 
I see not the birds and the sunshine, 
I heed not the winds as they gUde. 
I think of the past and the future. 
And my eyes are beclouded with tears. 
The past is a dream that is vanished; 
The future— what has it that cheers? 



200 Indian Ltrver^ s Lament. 

Here, under this mound, she is lying. 
To moulder in silence alone; 
She knows not I'm standing above her: 
I call, but she heeds not the tone. 
Oh, lately she came, if I named her; 
On all that I uttered, she hung; 
And, close as the vine to the oak tree. 
Her spirit to mine ever clung. 

She lies in a prison of sorrow; 
The light never breaks on her eyes : 
Her hands are clasped over a bosom 
No more to be rounded by sighs. 
In darkness, of friendship forgotten. 
Unheeding, she slumbers alway — 
Ah, soon the form that was fairest 
Must be as the formless clay. 

The ages shall linger above her, 
And still shine the pitiless sun ; 
The moon shall be tender and dreamy. 
The feet of the light winds shall run, 
And lovers and maids shall be gathered 
In happy and endless embrace; 



Indian Lover's Lament. 20I 

But for her, in the ranks of the happy, 
Shall never be any more place. 

And yet, I am told that a spirit 
Was dwelling within her pure frame, 
That has gone to a beautiful region, 
In a country that no man can name. 
A spirit, thin, pallid, but lovely, 
With eyes that are mistless and bright, 
And clad in a robe, than the grass-flowers 
More perfectly spotless and white. 

If so, sweet spirit, await me! 
One day I shall come to thy place; 
I shall seek thee all over that country. 
And yearn for thy loving embrace. 
Forget me not, spirit most perfect ! 
Let Korux remain in thy heart: 
Again we will wander together, 
Nor one from the other depart. 

Where the light never dies in the valleys, 
Where the winds never angrily blow. 
Far away from the dread of the white man, 
What happiness may we know! 



202 Indian Lover's Lament. 

And the vows now so painfully broken, 

Forever and aye we'll repair. 

Oh, . spirit beloved, be ready ! 

Oh, wait for, and welcome me there I 



TO ZEPHYR. 



TRANCE to me, sing to me; 
Swift Sweet, and fling to me 
Kisses more soft than the leaf of the rose; 

Ripple, and wing to me; 

Speed, speed, and bring to me 
Secrets too dainty for words to disclose. 

Fondly, O, glide to me; 

Arms open wide to me; 
Pour round my being thy rapturous grace; 

Lean on, confide to me — 

Be as a bride to me : 
Sweet, I am faint for the breath of thy face. 



204 To Zephyr. 

Zephyr, come nigh to me; 

Lisp to me, sigh to me; 
Tell me thy passion; 'twill lighten thy lieart. 

Vain is -my cry to thee; 

Still wilt go by to me? 
Well, then, I scorn thee! Poor trifler, depart. 



MISTHER OTLANAGAN'S ADVOISE 
TIL A COUNTHRYMAN. 



o 



H, cum til Ameriky, Paddy, 

No matther how good yer istate is; 
'Tis a land wid a tech iiv the carn-joos, 

The chisest uv cabbige and taties. 
A shanty here rints for jist nothin', 

Or a cellar that's nice for a laddy ; 
An' the pigs runs roun' loose in the night time, 
Cxruntin', "Ate me, an' thanks til ye, Paddy." 

As for biznis, 'tis phnty an' aisy ; 

Ye kin live like a prince or a Turruk; — 
Unless they bring in thim low Chinese, 

There'll alius be plinty of worruk. 



2o6 MistJier O' Flaniiagan'' s Advoise 

There's railroads forever is bildin', 
An' conthracts is given away — 

Jobs fatther than iver ye dhramed iiv, 
That clare ye two dollars a day. 

Ye're a vother as soon as ye cum here — 

Invited to parthies and balls; 
An' they sind ye right aff til the Congriss — 

An' the jails all has tumble-down walls. 
Ye kin do as ye plase, an', be jabers, 

There's nothin' on airth to be fearin'; 
Ivry sowl here igspicts to git office, 

An' smiles to the igziles uv Erin. 

May the Vargin look swate to ould Ireland, 

An' dhrive from it Inglish an' ill : 
I've taken an oath uv alleginse. 

But I am an Oirishman still. 
An' this is the r'ason I'm lovin' 

An' praisin' this land uv the free; 
Ye kin sware iv'ry day to be loyal, 

An' yit a true Fenian be. 

So, cum til Ameriky, Paddy; 

Bring Biddy an' all uv the brats; 



Til a Coiinthrynian. 207 

Giv' yer lan'lord a taste uv shillalah — 

Turn over yer hovel to ^ rats! 
Bring Biddy, the jewil — och, bHss her ! 

Hir ize like a diamon' shine; 
Her breath is as swate as a posy, 

Her lips is as lushus as wine. 



TO THE SOUTH WIND. 



O 



H, gently blow, 
South Wind, and flow, 
Along these barren fields of snow. 
Till melt their flakes, 
And winter takes 
His homeward flight past frontier lakes. 

Disperse his chills! 

Release the rills, 
To swirl and ripple through the hills! 

Call star-eyed flowers 

To deck the bowers, 
Through which" shall dance the twinkling Hours. 

Waft feathery droves 
To fill our groves 
With nymphic songs and fruitful loves! 



To the South Wind. 2G9 

'Mid hill-side rocks, 

Let bleating flocks 

Respond afar to crowing cocks. 

Bring odorous balm, 

From lands of palm. 
To steep my soul in tropic calm; 

Subdue each sense, 

O'erwrought, intense. 
To stillness and to indolence. 

Then let me lie 

Where tall pines sigh. 
And listen as thou murmurest by, 

Or 'neath broad vine, 

Watch shade and shine 
Flutter, pursue, and intertwine. 

Like human fates 

That mystery mates 
In troubled flow through life's estates — 

A clouded dance, 

A swift advance 
Through trying changes of mischance. 
^5 



2IO To the South Wind. 

Dear, mellow chime 

Of summer time! 
Blest voice of that entrancing clime, 

Where never beat 

The angry feet 
Of icy winds and Titan sleet, 

Along these dells, 

Like distant bells, 
Be heard again thy joyous swells — 

Thy flute-note calls, 

Thy breath that falls 
An echo from heaven's crystal walls. 

Luring afar 

From moil and jar, 
To heights where purple dream-lands are; 

Forerunning peace. 

And fat increase. 
And all that gives our want release. 

Prophet of wealth, 
And jocund health — 
Doer of charities by stealth. 



To the South Wind. 2 1 1 

The sick e'er bless 
Thy soft caress, 
And grateful smile, and suffer less. 

Young children's feet, 

Through field and street, 
Bound playful forth thy play to meet; 

And fond youths vie, 

With thee to sigh, 
When moonlight melts on beauty's eye. 

Sitting at ease, 

The old man sees 
Thy billowy sporting on the leas. 

Till, wave-like, roll, 

Beyond control, 
A tide of memories through his soul. 

Thy gentle airs, 

Beguihng cares, 
Draw pure souls upward unawares; 

Through willowy wave. 

Thy lonely stave 
Sighs, like a mourner, o'er the grave. 



212 To the South Wind. 

No tyrant thou, 

With iron brow 
And force to bend — no matter how! 

No blustering knave 

To roar and rave, 
And prove to worms that thou art brave \ 

Heaven's blessed child. 

Low-voiced and mild, 
Thou teachest men ambition wild, 

That who do most 

At duty's post, 
Ask notice least, make least of boast; 

But courteous move. 

Intent to prove 
The wise omnipotence of love ; 

Faith yielding cheer — 

And if not here, 
Their names in light shall yet appear. 

So, South Wind, blow, 
And cheerily flow 
Along these barren fields of snow; 



To the South Wind, 21 3 



Flow like sweet rhymes; 
Bring sunnier times, 
Dear angel of celestial dimes!' 



MAGDALEN. 



' \ BURNING, weary waste of years,. 

A torture of disease and fears, 
And yet, alas! not many tears — 

The heart must feel ere eyes can fill. 
As farther and fainter the strokes be 
Of bells on ships that sail to sea, 
So humbled conscience spoke to me 

With lessening voice, and then was stilL 

Ah, I have known fierce greed and hate. 
And pride cold, but importunate. 
And lust that never would abate. 

But glowed through pain a fire of hell; 
All passions with a tooth to gnaw. 
Crimes, too, that skulk at thought of law. 
And leave the body a sapless straw, 

A moving mummy, a soulless shell. 



Magdalen. 2 1 5 

And yet no blood is on my hands; 
No pale ghost ever near me stands, 
^V^ith eyes that burn like fiery brands, 

My fitful slumbers to affright. 
What have I done — well, I have done; 
But deadlier sentence might be won, 
And redder currents might have run 
Across these hands so thin and white. 

For I have sometimes brooded much 
On vengeance; and have leaped to clutch 
A dagger, keen and cold to touch, 
• With will at point to give the blow. 
But force unseen curbed headlong wrath ; 
The viper slid across my path. 
Nor knew how close for fatal math 
Death followed, vengeful of my woe. 

God lets him live. God's ways are good. 
Though not by me quite understood. 
Why thrives the man % My orphanhood — 

Why was it defenceless and defiled? 
I know I once was pure as snow. 
My heart as light as winds that blow. 



2 I 6 Masdakn 



And cheek as soft as morning glow, 
And eyes not fierce as now, but mild. 

I'hen, earth seemed very clean and sweet; 
Where things made single moved to meet, 
A sure perfection to complete. 

And nights were short, and days were long. 
A gOod man reared me as his own ; 
By his revered name I was known, 
And through our home, like leaves, were strewn. 

Comfort and culture, books and song. 

Till life moved to a ([uicker strain ; 
I loved, and seemed beloved .again ; 
But love grew thorny and full of pain, 

And what was asked, alas I was given. 
It was not passion broke my heart; 
I thought to act a wifely part. 
Nor ever dreamed my lover's art 

Was fashioned of hell and not of heaven; 

'J'ill, when our nuptial hour was set. 
The groom came not. But guests were met, 
And many spoke a true regret, 
And hoped to see me yet a bride. 



Magdalen. 21 J 

But long ere dawn that cruel day 
The man had fled — none knew what way; 
And I, a cast-off thing, must stay, 
Nor find a shelter at his side. 

Months rolled along, and with them came 
A consciousness that burned like flame 
Within my mind. J knew that shame 

Must henceforth be my hapless lot. 
I, too, took wings, and blindly fled: 
Whither, I cared not. Let day shed 
No beam upon me. Count me dead ; 

And be my name by all forgot. 

My child — thank God I — brief space did see: 

I was so full of misery. 

Small vital force in him could be. 

He sleeps, a head-stone at his grave; 
Wages of shame procured that stone; 
And harlot-fingers there have grown 
Sweet flowers, that summer-long have blown, 

And willows that toss like a wandering wave. 

Years now I've wandered far and wide. 
Restless, and nowhere can abide; 



2l8 Ma^rjakn 



And once, upon an eventide, 
Far in the west the man I met. 

His eye was musing, deep, and cold — 

A moment held, then sidewise rolled. 

Ah, did he know me — grown so old? 
But he seems young as ever yet. 

I found his home, when darkness came — 
A home well worthy of the name, 
Since not for him, as me, was shame; — 

His sin concealed, men deem him wise. 
There, through a shutter, streaming bright, 
Flamed forth upon the moonless night 
The peaceful glory of a light. 

And set a picture to my eyes : 

A fond, young wife as sweedy fair 
As any creature of the air; 
And smiling, innocent of care — 

Her sky of happiness unflecked; 
Smiling on him who did- me wrong. 
As, with a gentle arm and strong. 
He danced his boy to merry song. 

Nor my near presence could suspect. 



Magdalen. 2 1 9 

The boy, he wore his father's face — 
The same bold carriage, yet with grace, 
That to his mother I could trace — 

And how could I but hate that child? 
I thought upon a far-off grave — 
A child that never pleasure gave — 
A child no father sought to save — 

On whom its mother never smiled. 

And who was she who sat that night 
Within the warm and lovely light, 
In womanhood complete and white, 

Content with him I should have loved? 
Why stood I in the frosty gloom. 
Foul as a creature of the tomb, 
And saw another in the room 

From whence, far off, I was removed? 

My guardian taught me, "God is just;'' 

Believe it I am sure I must. 

Since things unknown we take on trust; 

But justice sometimes Hngers long. 
I thought, for many days, to be 
The avenger of my misery, 



2 20 Magdalen. 

And give that man what he gave me — 
The hell to which we both belong. 

But, as I hid from night to night, 

Some spell my purpose seemed to blight; 

Some thought my weak heart would affright, 

Till to all vengeance I grew loth. 
Let him enjoy what fate endears; 
Let no want blight his infant's years; 
His wife's sweet eyes be free of tears ; 

Alone I suffer enough for l)oth. 

So, like a wolf, I slipped away, 
And they — are happy, I dare say; 
But I — I live as best I may, 

And kill the time that moves too slow. 
Sometimes Lm here, sometimes I'm there; 
But ever at a fight with care. 
And ever striving to look fair; 

And life is short, I'm glad to know. 

For no man looks with sympathy. 
Or ever speaks true words to me ; 
Yet do I have much flattery, 

And looks that sometimes pass for love. 



Magdalen. 2 2 1 

But sneers may follow the softest sigh ; 
And— passion glutted— the melting eye 
Seeks other faces as I go by, 

Or studies the street, or roofs above. 

So let it be ! While sands may run, 
I shall be outcast and undone-^ 
The wife of many, not of one — 

A thing few pity, and all blame. 
Fair dames, I beg you, hurry fast; 
And, gentles, ah, as you go past. 
Let virtuous, stony looks be cast 

On her you fee for hours of shame I 

Tm so accustomed to all scorn. 
Nothing can make me more forlorn. 
Except it be that I adorn 

A body daily growing old. 
Oh, much I doubt, when beauty's gone, 
And I am haggard, weak, and wan. 
If fish may in my net be drawn — 

If I may cope with want and cold. 

Perchance, when time shall come to weep, 
It may be best to go to sleep; 



2 2 2 Magdalen. 

I know a stream that's swift and deep, 

Not far away from a child's grave. 
If there I perish, who will care? 
What face a saddened look will wear? 
The world has many like me to spare — 
• Too many for each a tear to crave. 

I sometimes wish a virtuous soul, 
With boundless lucre at control. 
Might greatly want to see me whole — 

Almost as once, ere days of shame : 
Might give of means he cannot need, 
And rear a home to house and feed 
Us hardened wretches, and would plead 

There with us in his Master's name. 

But this is idle — painful, too. 

He who seeks me will come to woo ; 

Inside the door you'll find his shoe, 

"When darkness veils the stealthy street. 
Would he might come while yet 'tis day, 
And bear this suffering frame away, 
To moulder in the friendly clay ! 

And what is future, let me meet. 



RELIGIOUS POEMS. 



ASPIRATION. 



/'^H, to be holy, as Jesus is holy! 

Oh to be pure, as my Saviour is pure! 
Growing, through patience, more humble, more 
lowly; 
Learning, in meekness, to toil and endure ! 

Constant through trial, to love and to duty; 

Cheerfully bearing Hfe's losses and pain; 
Looking above for the land that is beauty; 

Faithful in service before I would reign ! 

Never to doubt, since my dear Lord before me 
Trod the rough path over which I must go; 

Never to fear if the thunder boom o'er me, 
Or if a gale from Gethsemane blow. 
16 



2 2 6 Aspirations. 

But, as a city that shines o'er the valleys, 
Beacon to pilgrims perplexed by the way, 

True to my Leader wherever He rallies, 
Of His full brightness reflecting some ray; 

Let me remain till the Day of Thanksgiving 
Dawn in the white of eternity drest; 

Uprightly, blamelessly, manfully living — 

Then peacefully dying; — with God be the rest. 



SAD HEART, SOW IN TEARS. 



OAD heart, sow in tears; 

Gain, not to keep! 
God tills by heartaches, 

Many and deep. 
Trust and believe Him; 

Soon you shall reap. 

Into the furrow 

Falls the bright grain ; 
Clouds gather over it. 

Beats the wild rain. 
When comes the harvest, 

Great is the gain. 



2 28 Sad Heart So7v in Tears. 

Sad heart, sow in tears; 

Gain not to keep! 
Fierce if the trial, 

Sweet is the sleep. 
Rest for the weary — 

Ah, it is deep. 



IT MATTERS NOT. 



I 



T matters not— it matters not 
How little anxious toil can give, 
Or how obscure the unyielding lot 

Through which we move and live. 
If hearts grow gentle, pure, and wise. 
Deriving from above supplies 
To guide the will and energies. 

What else may be— it matters not. 

It matters not — it matters not 

If friends be false, or friends be true. 
Or what the world may wish, or wot. 

Or if it give our due. 
Each soul within itself contains 
A separate destiny, whose gains 
Are some of peace, but more of pains: 

So let all be— it matters not. 



230 // Matters Not. 

It matters not — it matters not 

If times wax worse as they advance ; 

If fiercer grow the war of thought, 
And lewder song and dance. 

Reforms reach but the single mind ; 

No law of right the mass can bind; 

A jewel here and there we find — 
What others are — it matters not. 

It matters not — it matters not 

If measured sands are wasting fast; 

If soon must come a day unsought — 
That day, for us, the last. 

Since all that moves desire or pride 

Into oblivion must subside, 

Eternity, quick, open wide — 

And time's poor dream — it matters not. 



CHRISTMAS EYE— 1869. 



/^~^OME, sing the angels' song to-night! 
^~^ That song forever sweet, as when 
First broke from out the starry height 

"Glory to God, good-will to men." 
And sing, as love prolongs the strain. 

The Mother mild, the wondrous birth 
Of Him who plucked the thorn from pain. 

And left His peace with sinful earth. 

Long past His sufferings and toil — 

The bloody death, the gloomy grave — 
The homeward triumph from the spoil 

Of foes too fierce for men to brave. 
He sits, to-night, the King of Kings, 

Enthroned above the throngs of light. 
Who hide their faces with their wings. 

And chant His glory, grace, and might. 



232 Christinas Eve—iMc,. 

The ages draw their hngering length — 

Their flying change of sun and shade : 
And hate moves nations by its strength, 

And weakness is of power afraid. 
Yet not reversed our God's decree 

Foreshadowed in the angels' song, 
That peace upon the earth shall be, 

Good-will henceforth with men belong. 

In humble hearts, — no matter where. 

Nor what the fortune of their days, — 
Hearts self-repressed in patient prayer, — 

Hearts all unworldly made by praise, — 
Are depths of blessing purely fed 

By hidden force of changeless love, 
That make the life by mortals led 

Content as angel-life above. 

The outward struggle, inward strife. 
Are meant for high development; 

We know what hand directs our life — 
The purpose of each incident. 

And, knowing all, we murmur not, 

But bless the changeless, sure good-wilU 



Chrismas Eve — 1869. 233 

That portions to each separate lot, 

What best each separate vice may kill. 

That pledges safety, but not ease; 

Works by attrition, not by rust; 
And brings us on, by slow degrees. 

To perfect rest and higher trust. 
W^e know the hand, we bless the will; 

Come shade or shine, come tear or smile, 
All things work good, and none bring ill. 

For love is near us all the while! 

So sing we, then, this festal night. 

The praise of Him who once, for men. 
Assumed the burden and the blight. 

To give us Eden back again. 
And this our carol should express — 

With this begin, and with it cease- 
He took our flesh our lives to bless; 

He bears our load, He gives us peace. 



RELIGIOUS DIVISIONS. 



"Of old things, all are over-old: 
Of good things, none are good enough; 

We'll show that we can help to frame 
A world of other ^twfi.'"— Words woiih. 



"\ 1 THAT might be done for earth, could man 
Irreverent notions put away, 
And feel he lives but to obey — 

To forward heaven's well-ordered plan ! 

What souls might be reclaimed and saved! 
What mental darkness, moral Wight, 
Would be transfigured in the light 

That shuns a heart by self depraved ! 



Religious Divisions. 23 

Our Lord is torn by wrangling sects — 
His body mangled as of old;^'^ 
Each sect is narrow, pinched, and cold, 

And none its wicked part suspects. 

For each vaunts ''progress," and asserts 
Its large improvement on the past; 
As if the best were always last, 

And time-worn things have least deserts. 

As if what Christ himself contrived 
Might be amended, or improved. 
Or from its settled function moved. 

And into countless Hydras rived. 

And feeling is put forth for right; 

Authority provokes a sneer; 

The times reject an overseer, 
Even if he have true heavenly might. 

''Down with a hero!" is the call; 

"Down with the priest, and them that rule! 

The formless mob shall be the school 
From whence we shape our dogmas all ! " 

* "The Church, which is Ilis Body."— St. Paitl. 



236 Religions Divisions. 

Thus the imperfect is a power 

That strives to mold what Christ began 
And creeds are made to fit each man, 

And fall an endless, dismal shower. 

Dark, hungry souls, that wait for truth 
AVhile parties wrangle and deceive, 
Know not, alas ! what to believe, 

And perish without hope or ruth. 

But this is safe for me, I know : 

To cleave to forms and doctrines old — 
To grasp them with a firmer hold; 

For change is doubt, and doubt is woe. 



II. 



Thus wrote I but the other day, 
And yet it was four years ago: 
Time passes like the winds that blow- 
So swift, .so swift, it hies away. 

And with it pass both hopes and fears — 
Opinions pass, or suffer change; 
The soul attains a wider range, 

And grows more tolerant with the years. 



Religions Divisions. 237 

For, after all, man is but man ; 

His views are blindness at the best: 

Not here are certainty and rest, 
But truth has many sides to scan. 

The bird of passage, spring by spring, 

Comes back to the familiar nest; 

For other home it makes no quest. 
But there, contented folds its wing. 

And we, amid ancestral creeds 

Scarce questioned, mostly take a place, 
Presuming on God's equal grace, 

And blind to many a truth that pleads 

For our acceptance. 'Tis not well ! 
But better far by something hold, 
Than filled with doubt and questions bold. 

That savor of the deepest hell. 

For One, who yet shall come, is Judge, 

And knows of purpose, strength, and will; 
He shall the faithful hope fulfil, 

And his bestowals none shall grudge. 



238 Religious Divisions. 

And He shall gather in His hands 

Time's tangled threads that crosswise run, 
And of His people make but one, 

To serve Him in His heavenly lands. 

HI. 

Above all names One Name is set; 

The Crucified is King alone; 

The great archangels, at His throne, 
With humble reverence oft are met. 

His lightest wish is their command; 

They speed like lightning at His word; 

By selfish preference undeterred, 
Their movements all go hand in hand; 

And heaven is thus a heaven indeed, 

And all the worlds have certain peace; 
But truth and harmony would cease, 

]\light every angel frame his creed. 

Building on preference, or law 

Interpreted by his sole light — 

Might each one tamper with the right, 

And individual inference draw. 



Religious Divisions. 239 

One rule, and only one, controls 

The orbs that fill unmeasured space; 
And scientists like action trace 

In natural things between the poles. 

Man only would ignore fixed bounds, 
Suiting his action to self-will — 
Would tasks self-born, with might, fulfil, 

And leave undone what God propounds. 



IV. 



Divisions are the seed of death ; 

They change to comets peaceful stars, 
And desolate, with hateful wars. 

All lands where sons of men draw breath. 

God's kingdom is a bond of peace; 
And he who on its spirit feeds. 
Will leave untouched its simple creeds, 

That faith and reverence may increase; 

That brotherhood be not a name, 

But substance felt in every heart; 
Since good men, held by faith apart, 

Are ready soon with words of blame, 



240 Religious Divisions. 

And enginery of hate and blood. 
The principle of discord lies 
In what disorders and defies 

The visible unity of the good. 

Christ left His laws to loyal souls; 

He left His kingdom for their home : 
He built nor sect, nor papal Rome, 

Nor gave his people separate goals; 

But bade them harmonize, and strive 
In one sole house of charity, 
One kingdom of the bound, but free- 
Dead to themselves, to Him alive. 



NEBRASKA POEMS 



NEBRASKA— 1866. 



T^HE virgin of the wilderness, 
^ She sits upon her hills alone; 

Loose sprigs of cedar in her hair, 
A vine-wreath round her zone; 

As gray-eyed Pallas pure and free, 

Expectant of the things to be. 

No robe of art in pliant fold 

Wraps her deep bosom from the cold, 

Nor rustling veil, nor cheap disguise. 
Conceals the freshness of her eyes. 
Beneath her feet an hundred hills 
Flash, singing to the naked hills; 
And forest-belted rivers glide 
Through prairie valleys, warm and wide. 
Not hers are breadths of palm or pine, 
Or sands of gold, or mountain mine,. 



244 Nebraska — 1866. 

Or dizzy steeps, or barren rocks, 

But farm-land vales and grass for flocks; 

And over her, spanned in splendor, rise 
Mild, changeful depths of cheerful skies. 

She knows that she was born to be 

The mother of a mighty race; 
Heroic sons whom reverence seeks — 

Daughters to wear all grace; — 
That on her soil there yet must rise 
Whatever prospects good men prize: 
The pure church, up whose heaven-topped spire. 
Creeps the long sunset's lingering fire; 
The college in whose reverend shade 
Unpolished youths are Grecians made; 
And tasteful homes; and those calm keeps 
Where musing memory broods and weeps. 
She knows, elate, that she was born 
'Jo blend the sunset with the morn ; 
To add new vigor to the chain 
That links the mountain to the main; 
Till growing greater and more great. 
She sits the peer of every state; 

And all shall love and call her blest — 
The virgin Mother of the W^st. 



A FAREWELL. 



XTEBRASKA, dear Nebraska! 

Thy hills are far away, 
Thy bowery vales, where Hngers 

The long-enamored day. 
But sweet the scented west-wind, 

As flute notes o'er the sea. 
Ripples from yonder sunset, 

And tells my heart of thee. 

What though day's dying glories 

Last crown the mountain lone, 
And many a land has prospects 

Far lovelier than thine own I 
I roam by mount and river, 

I pass by lake and lea. 
To note their mingled beauties, 

Then homeward turn to thee. 



246 A Farewell. 

And still the sea may thunder. 

Far-breaking on the shore, 
And still the windy pine-woods 

Send back responsive roar; 
And cool beneath the mountain 

May lie the azure lake, 
And down the rocky ledges 

The silvery cataract break. 

Far dearer are thy meadows, 

Thy rounded grassy hills. 
Thy sandy-bedded rivers, 

Thy shallow, reedy rills. 
For not a land is lying 

Beneath the heaven's broad dome, 
Can proffer such contentment 

As fills the land of home. 

Oh, there's a spot made holy, 

Deep in thy sheltering breast — 
A spot of calm seclusion 

Where loved ones are at rest; 
And there, when wanderings over, 

And gone life's little day. 
May I with them be lying. 

And mingle clay with clay. 



THE WEEPING WATER. 



TJie OmaJia and Otoe Indians, being at war^ cJiatucd 
to meet on their common hunting-ground south of the 
Platte river, in Neb?'aska. A fierce battle ensued, in 
which all the 7tiale warriors of both tribes being slain, 
the women and children came upon the battle-field and 
sat down and wept. From the fountain of tJieir tears 
arose and ever flows tJie little stream known as Ne- 
hawka, or Weeping Water. 



THE WEEPING WATER. 



'T^HE lingering suns crept round a land at peace, 
While June, warm-eyed, was loitering in the 
vales. 
Long-gone was seed-time; and the sportive birds 
Flew through broad-bladed corn, or 'mid the bloom 
Of yellow melon-flowers, where slope the fields . 
Down to the Elkhorn stream. 

But there was one, 
Among the Otoe lodges on the bluffs, 
Full envious of the mated, cheerful birds — 
He, Sananona named, o' the Iron Eyes. 
Who, dreaming long in virtuous discontent, 
For that the summer kindled in his blood 
And all his life grew languorous for his love, 
Came with the sunrise to the wealthy lodge 
Of his sole chief, Shosguscan. Him he found 



250 The Weeping Water. 

Reviving vigor spent in sweltering sleep, 
Outside his tent. On long-haired coyote robes^ 
In the deep shadow of his tent, he sat, 
One idle hand with a pet dog a-toy, 
And in his mouth his pipe of blood-red stone. 
Mutely expectant, then, the young man stood, 
While grim Shosguscan, with half-opened eyes, 
Looked subtly in the tell-tale, wishful face, 
'Gainst which the level sunbeams streamed like 

sjjears ; 
But all was silent save the sighing wind. 

At length the sage chief spoke: *'It is no foe 
Lurking amidst our corn-fields, nor wise thought 
Of pubhc welfare brings thee here, I see. 
What wouldst thou, Sananona?" 

As when first 
A school-boy, trapped in frivolous mischief, writhes 
Like a thing wounded while his master's eye 
Accuses him till he confesses all, 
Young Sananona, glancing right and left, 
Abashed and humbled thus to share the thought 
That filled him as the morning filled the meads, 
Unveiled his wish. 



The Weeping Water. 251 

"Mine are the wants of youth, 
Oh, great Shosguscan-youth, thou knowest has: 

wants. 
To be the victor in all manly sports, 
To tireless chase the flying antelope, 
To battle all day long with worthy foes- 
These are youth's wants: but youth has wants 

besides. 
On windy nights, I sit within my door 
Voiceless and lonely, for I lack a mate. 
Small need is mine to hunt the shaggy bull. 
Or lure the wary pickerel from the lake- 
Success is bootless where it is unshared." 
Here grim Shosguscan, with impatient yawn- 
"Oh! Ah: Well, take a wife!" 

"Thou sayest well!'" 

Quoth Sananono. 

"And what hinders thenf 
Shosguscan cried. "Go, make dehberate choice 
Among our g.rls; choose, win, and her lead home 
That best befits your mind! And wherefore here^ 
Why speak to me of maids, and windy nights. 
And sentimental loneliness; Not I— 
I am no tier of true lovers' knots, 



252 Th€ Weeping Water. 

No go-between for billing boys and girls, 

No dealer in love-simples for sore hearts. 

I hold myself for something different. 

I am a warrior, Sananona, I — 

A man of mighty battles and of blood. 

Mine is the voice of greatness in our tribe — 

The hand that destines all. Not me for love, 

Not me for maidens seek; but find some crone, 

That, as a quacking duck along the streams, 

Leads forth her timorous brood I Cio ! Go! young 

man. 
From women seek your mate!" 

Against this scorn, 
Wrathful and black, young Sananona stood. 
But as before his nation's chief befits 
A youth to stand with quiet modesty 
And humbled self-importance, so he paused 
To smother impulse and select his words. 
"I am not here to seek your offices, 
Oh, brave Shosguscan, as a go-between. 
I ask no man to win a maid for me. 
I best can tell the secret I best know. 
But this my errand : she who moves my will, 
And whom with pure and honorable rites 



The Weeping Water. 253 

I would install as mistress of my lodge, 

Is not an Otoe; dwells not by the stream 

Of the swift Elkhorn; but among the tents 

Of warlike Omahas — a handsome race — 

She honors womanhood and waits for me. 

Her tribesman know our troth, and are content. 

''So you would bring a foreign woman here!" 
Cried harsh Shosguscan. "One who, in the days 
Of vigilant warfare, shall forewarn her friends, 
Bringing defeat to counsel: — one whose heart 
Shall evermore be flying to the fields 
Wherein her childhood played, and to the light 
Of kindly faces she may see no more. 
Have Otoe maidens, then, no amorous grace? 
The daughters of your fathers, — are they worse. 
Or less attractive than this alien girl^ 
Why shame your people thus?" 

Then gravely spoke 
The Iron-Eyed: "1 cannot read my mind 
To say why this I choose, what that reject. 
I follow love's blind instinct. If I err. 
Mine is the error common to our race. 
But love that bhndly leads is seldom wrong, 



2 54 The Weeping Water. 

For most are happy in their wedded loves. 
Indifferent, I see our Otoe girls; 
But when Nacoumah, in the April days, 
I met among her people, then my hopes 
Rose up and followed after. Oh, my chief, 
Respect my need, I pray, and bid me go 
To hither bring the maiden of the North, 
And I, in times of danger, with my life 
Will answer for her loyalty!" 

Then stood 
The youth expectant, pleading with his face, 
That mirrored forth the hopes and fears within, 
As the great Platte, when low in autumn days. 
Near to its islands, on its glassy wave, 
Reveals the woodlands and the forest-life. 
And stern Shosguscan, musing on his face, 
And running over all the honored past. 
When Sananona, in the thickest fight, 
Had borne the brunt of battle with the best. 
And wrought great deeds, and won the hearts of 

all, 
Wavered, inclined to grant his moving suit, 
And bid him seek his maid and bring her home. 
Eut swift succeeded thoughts of what was best 



The Weeping Water. 255 

For general welfare, and the answer he, 

Led by a prudent state craft, ought to make — 

Settling wise precedent. Then thus he said: 

**0h, Sananona, much I long to yield 

This boyish quest, for I, too, have been young. 

I know how whimsical this youthful love — 

With what caprices unaccountable 

The youth selects his maid, the maid her man. 

I know how disappointment pricks, and how 

The heart, defeated of its cherished aim. 

Knots its great arteries and swells with sighs 

And strives to burst. And I would spare all pain ; 

But this I know — for I, too, have been young — 

That love has lives as many as the bear, 

That, filled with arrows and with burly spears, 

'Scapes to the hills, plucks forth the barbs, and 

grows. 
Erelong, as vigorous as before. To-day, 
None Hke Nacoumah: but ere wintry suns 
Waste nebulous glances in the frozen gales, 
Some other maiden will inspire your sighs; 
For youth runs lightly into any love. 
Oh, be advised! Go seek an Otoe bride. 
Dismiss this passion; it will work you bale — . 



256 The Weeping Water. 

Nor you alone, but all. (iol" 

And he went. 
Straight to his lodge the young brave went, and 

closed 
His door, and with himself communed. As one, 
Who, whirling through the country by a train 
That flies the track and plunges down a steep. 
Picks himself out from shattered heaps of cars 
And smutched and mangled bodies of the dead; 
Then feels along each bruised limb with care. 
And slowly breathes to test if hurts within 
'Jlireaten life's citadel; so all his soul 
Wan Sananona to himself exposed, 
And weighed Nacoumah 'gainst the Otoe maids, 
And said at lehgth, ''I will not cross my fate 
Unnaturally in love. This argument 
Shosguscan holds about a light-heeled lust, 
That dances like a reed blade in the wind 
Hither and thither, without settled bound, 
Suits but with wanton age. Come then what 

may : 
If brief my life, let it at least be true 
To natural impulse when the aim is just. 
So, sauntering to the valley with a line 



The Weeping Water. 257 

As one on pensive piscatory bent, 
Soon as the woodlands hid his steahhy course, 
He northward turned, and sought the lovely lodge 
That hid Nacoumah from the enamored world, 
And her he wed: and they had bhss enough. 



II. 



And days went by — the laughing days of June: 
But yet the Otoe was supplied with meat 
And wrought no havoc with the flocks of God, 
But let the days, in aimless waste, go by 
Amid his wives in the well-furnished lodge. 
Content with peace, — with idleness and peace. 
But when, at length, the women raised a wail 
Of shortening substance and the grim-eyed wolf, 
He rose, as one from sleep, and felt his strength- 
Stretching his sinews in the pleasant sun. 
And as an eagle whets his murderous beak 
Upon the tree-top and the granite-ledge. 
Or practices in cloud-land his fell swoop, 
AVhen, dropping from immeasurable heights 
A thousand fathoms down, we see him first 
A speck in the abyss, then soars and falls, 
18 



258 The Weeping Water. 

Rises and sinks again, and yet again, 

Each time descending lower, until, at last, 

He hovers o'er his nest and settles there. 

The hunter filed his flinty arrow-heads, 

Sharpened the hatchet and the dreadful knife, 

And day by day bent to athletic games-7- 

To run long miles, to leap a miry brook, 

To shoot a reed-mark, and to overthrow 

His mighty tribesmen in the wrestler's toils, 

Winning great fame, and mastering his powers. 

Until, fatigued, at evening home was sweet. 

But when the moon was rounding night by night. 

And the green hills were flooded with its bath 

Of silver-streaming light, through which far swam 

The sentinel eye — distrustful of surprise— 

The Otoe passed the threshold of his lodge 

In the great village on the Elkhorn bluffs, 

Called forth his thronging progeny and wives. 

And wended to the south. 

So fared they forth — 
The inspiration of necessity 

Their constant guide — as through long ages, back 
To the abnormal hour that bore to time 
Their changeless race. But aptly framed their rules 



The Weeping Water. 259 

For a rude justice, and the lack of law, 
Custom, the precedent of use, supplied. 
Among their bands no daft reformer rose 
To paint the visions of his flighty soul, 
And lead to lands hung toppling in the air. 
But childlike and content they held and taught, 
Without abridgment or an added grain, 
To simple faith their fathers left to them — 
Growing a rock-firm habit in their race. 
So went they forth, as went in all past years. 
And as still go in the deep spirit-world. 
Their awful fathers and their lovely wives. 
When on their annual hunts. The van was led 
By warriors, who loved war; by warriors proved 
On many a nameless but death-smitten field. 
These, mounted on swift steeds — swift as the clouds, 
Low-hung outriders of a coming storm — 
Armed at all points with bow and lofty lance. 
And murderous hatchet and the gleaming knife. 
Rode dreadful on the hills or through the vales, 
Scanning each shadow for a foe. Much need 
For caution was there. On these hunting-grounds, 
The fearful Sioux, death-sent, prowled tirelessly. 
As when, along; some blown Alaskan vale, 



2 6o The Weeping Water. 

A herd of Caribou drags forth its length, 
Seeking for mosses underneath the snow, 
And at the front its antlered patriarchs 
Explore the route, and lead the hinds and young, 
That, feeding, follow happy and secure, 
Behind them streamed the families with their goods, 
Women and children loitering by the way, 
Ponies with tent-poles dragging at their sides. 
And the gaunt pack that bays the midnight moon. 
And all day long, before them fled the game 
Across the pleasant plains, or stood and eyed 
From some low eminence of rounded hill, 
With timid curiosity. 

And thus. 
Two days they journeyed to the south and west, 
A June-time journey in a June-time mood. 
And sport, and love, and laughter ruled the time. 
But now was reached a fair idylHc land — 
A land of rolling meadow, and of rills 
That rippled through the morning like a voice, 
Or filled the darkness with mysterious sighs. 
Then, as ere eve the chief decreed to camp, 
With noisy clamor, as a flock of crows, 
That, lighting, huddle round a lonely marsh, 



The Weeping Water. 261 

Some kindle fires and cook the generous meal 

Of savory antelope, or prairie hen, 

Or rabbit, freshly caught; and some brace fast 

The lofty lodge-poles o'er an ample space. 

And fold them deep in warmth-compelling skins. 

The women, as befits domestic ways. 

Spread the wide couch of soft and well-tanned 

robes — 
Beaver, or otter, or the delicate fawn ; 
And children stand beside the glowing fires, 
Babbling between their mouthfuls with full hands. 

But ere the tasks were ended, or the feast 
Palled on a dulled and sated appetite. 
From out the hollow valleys of the south 
Rose tawny mists of smoke, and clomb to heaven, 
And caught the sunset in wan flowing horns. 
Then all the women were aware of fear. 
But every man felt at his mighty heart 
A sterner pulsing, for his will was firm. 
And, as an oak that bears the rushing storm, 
And quakes not at the thunder in its strength. 
But gnarls and knots in stubborn pride of power, 
So grew his muscles tense and hard as twist— 



262 The Weeping Water. 

Conditioned for a conflict, half-desired, 

But, as a brood of wild-cats, when a dog, 

Snuffing along the woodlands, nears their nest, 

Gather at once around the faithful dam. 

The Otoe tribesmen hasten to the lodge 

Of brave Shosguscan. Him they found alone. 

Sitting before his tent; a massive soul, 

And clear of vision as the evening star. 

Wisdom and will spoke from his lordly face — 

A presence that bends others without words — - 

Incarnate manhood's just authority. 

Thus as he sat, his blinkless eye full-fixed 

Upon the smoke-wreaths whirling o'er the hills. 

Around him came in silence and sat down 

His warlike tribesmen: but no word they spoke. 

Long-time he mused. At length the deep-toned 

voice 
Rose, as a full-brimmed bucket from a well. 
Lifting its treasure for men's needs. 

"Ye men 
Of Otoe, conscious in our strength to stand 
Unflinching in the face of every foe, 
And in the fiercest battle to maintain 
Our right, we wander through these hunting-grounds 



The Weeping Water. 263 

As inclination leads. If any doubt 

Our purpose of free-action, or our power 

To hold a ground once taken, let them come 

And put constraint upon us; bit our mouths. 

And tame us, as a horse, to know the rein; 

Or drive us homewards, as a fox is sped 

Back to his cover. In the face of all 

We sit down here. We seek no fight, indeed. 

Nor do we fear to find one. For this night, 

Be wary; lie in bands, and be secure!" 

But, as the brave Shosguscan finished thus, 
An Omaha, that, hunting through the hills, 
Had from afar surveyed the Otoe camp. 
And recognized the tribe by many signs. 
Came in with friendly words, and straightway told 
How his own tribe were likewise on their hunt. 
And two days earlier wandered to the south, 
Meeting wild herds, God-pastured for wild men; 
That theirs the camps deep in the hollow vales. 
Whose fires had wreathed the sunset in a robe 
Of saffron mist. So, then, no thought remained 
Of foes and war; but, as a man derives, 
In difficult places, from a true friend's face 



264 The Weeping Water. 

Support and confidence and headless ease, 
These neighbor-tribes, now for a time at peace — 
Equal in numbers and resource of war — 
Felt each securer in the other's might. 

But on the morrow, Sananona, whom 

Each day brought riper ease, by Otoe friends 

Was hailed, where, richly-tented he was found 

With slim Nacoumah, now his comely wife. 

And these, with gossip, garrulous speech, at home 

Discoursing of the pair, their secret soon 

Touched at Shosguscan's ear. And for that he — 

Judicial even in his social moods — 

Never forgave a personal affront 

Or question of opinion, but was harsh, 

And, as the ice upon a wintry stream, 

Cold and inflexible; forthwith he sent 

An embassy of grave and warlike men 

To summon Sananona to his lodge. 

But Sananona, with shrewd speech, declined. 

Too well he guessed the great obnoxious paw 

Of the fierce panther, that overtakes the herds 

Among the mountain valleys by the Platte, 

Was lighter than his chief's official hand. 



The Weeping Water. 265 

But, as the Otoe heralds homeward turned, 
He to his new-made aUies ran with speed. 
And, gathering them — a Hstening group — apart, • 
Thus spoke: "O friends, O brethren, now — for such 
To me ye are, since he who weds a wife 
Becomes more surely member of her house 
Than she of his — I claim your instant aid. 
When first I saw Nacoumah, my cold heart — 
That in its chamber dragged a numb, dead life. 
As, in some hollow trunk, through wintry days, 
Pent by the frigid darkness, clings the bee — 
Flew, like the bee in Spring-time, when the breast 
Of the broad prairie sparkles into bloom 
With beauty-crested flowers, to find, with her. 
Its natural human peace. With your consent. 
Her have I wedded in all proper rites. 
But now Shosguscan, the sole Otoe chief. 
By messages sent secretly to me, 
Commands me to his lodge; for he would cloud 
Nacoumah's days in widowhood, and me 
Punish for preference that goes from home. 
But O, good friends, I know your generous will, 
Your courage, and your might. And more I know; 
I know^ you honor natural love and grief. 



2 66 The Weeping Water. 

And hate oppression that has no excuse. 
I pray you then, be with me in my strait, 
Nor let the chief Shosguscan do me wrong ! 
Much do I fear, lest coming with a band 
Of sturdy warriors apt for forceful deeds. 
He seize me suddenly. That danger past, 
The matter may be setded happily 
In council, tribe with tribe." 

Forthwith replied 
Nacoumah's uncle, chief Watonashie — 
Watonashie, among the Omahas 
Highest in rank; "O Sananona, hear! 
No harm shall reach you without due offence. 
I, these my comrades, all our warlike tribe, 
Will take brave care that bold Shosguscan comes 
Not here, nor plays at force near us, unless — 
Unless," and now Watonashie looked grave 
As one abstracted in a passing thought. 
And fingered with his mighty hand the plumes 
Fixed in the tough, smooth handle of his spear— 
"Unless, indeed, he try a game of war, 
And do his worst, and hazard all." 

Thus, then, 
The Omahas, alert to aid the youth 



The Weeping Water. 267 

Whose fault seemed but the natural human way, 
Stood forth to champion him 'gainst his own tribe, 
And kept a wary watch. 

Meanwhile the men 
Sent by Shosguscan for the Iron-Eyed 
Came empty-handed back and told their tale. 
Then, fiercely from his seat Shosguscan rose, 
With greed of vengeance rankling in his heart, 
That one — a boy — scarce more than just a boy. 
Defied the rule and order of their tribe. 
And, gathering a score of stalwart braves, 
Strode o'er the hills and neared the wealthy tents, 
Of the stout-hearted Omahas. And, when, 
Not turning right or left, as bent to work 
Only his errand, and no parley hold. 
He pushed direct for Sananona's lodge-. 
Across his pathway, shot a sudden bar — 
Large-limbed Watonashie and warriors fierce, 
A host who never turned away from war. 

So then Watonashie; "Friend, wherefore here? 
This seems a show of force ! Are we at peace, 
I pray, or do you come for war?" 

As when 



2 68 The Weeping Water. 

A gaunt wolf, wandering near the guarded folds, 
Falls in a trap of close serrated steel, 
And, stung by pain, and maddened in his mind, 
Pulls at the chain and tests the firm trap's strength. 
But, mastered, yields at last, the Otoe chief 
Paused in the presence of superior force, 
His keen eye, flashing forth impatient wrath, 
And thus replied: "I come to claim my right. 
Great chief, you know me well. Within your tents 
There lurks one Sananona, who is mine. 
For him, alone, I come. We do not harm 
Your dogs that search our heels. We ask our own — 
Just that. Give me the hiding fugitive. 
And let our tribes be friends as heretofore." 

Then spoke Watonashie, great-hearted chief; 
"Young Sananona is, indeed, with us. 
And wedded to a maiden of our blood — 
Nacoumah, mine own niece. A nobler pair 
No time hath seen; — he, tall and lithe of form 
As pines that spine the backs of northern hills; 
But she more moon-faced than these nights of June. 
Much do I love them — I who have no sons 
Or daughters, childless chief. So I do pray. 



The Weeping Water. 269 

If Sananona, for some venial fault, 
Has merited your wrath, this timely hour 
You speak his pardon and receive his thanks, 
And make him happy in his spousal days— 
For his sake and for mine. So shall there be 
Peace, and a happy auspice for both tribes." 
But promptly sage Shosguscan answered him: 
''This youth, great chief, for whom you plead so 

well, 
With headstrong purpose and for boyish whim 
Has broken rule, and furnished precedent 
To other youths and maids and sturdy braves, 
To scorn authority. In every tribe. 
Order stands only in obedience; 
And he who rules, soon loses just respect 
If culprits may escape unscathed. So now 
I cannot fault like his condone. All men 
Have friends to plead in their excuse; and faults, 
Beginning small, pass quickly on to worse: 
Confusions come, and anarchy and hate. 
A fountain, as it rises, may be choked. 
But none can quell a river." 

Slowly, then, 
Watonashie, as one half-musing, said: 



270 The Weeping Water. 

"How much man prizes selfish sovereignty. 

He makes a rule accordant with his thought, 

And none shall break it with impunity. 

The happiness of units is a toy 

Weighed 'gainst a chief's command. This is not 

well! 
Better relax a rule, than crush a life 
Where no crime is." And then he paused, as one 
Who offers opportunity of speech. 
But silence reigned; no word the Otoe, chief 
Uttered; but stood defiant in his post, 
As one who will not yield. Then to his height 
The mighty-limbed Watonashie drew up 
His length enormous, and his fearful hand, 
Bony and vast, with threatening gesture raised. 
And flashed his furious eyes like shooting-stars, 
And in a voice of roaring thunder cried, 
"He you seek, imperious warrior, sits 
At ease within my tent; within my tent! 
Go, take him if you can ! but, ere you go. 
Weigh well the outcome. You shall slip in blood 
Sooner than he, unless my might prove less 
Than yours: of that make trial when you will!" 



The Weeping Water. 2f\ 

To him Shosguscan, with a baleful face, 

But calmly, answered : ' ' Do not doubt that I 

Will take young Sananona from your tent. 

I will not yield the right, except to force 

I am unequal to oppose." So, then. 

He turned, and with him went the Otoe braves 

Back o'er the hills, and sought the Otoe tents. 

Then did Watonashie, restraining those 

Who longed to slay Shosguscan where he stood, 

Or chase him homeward like a flying stag, 

Gather his honored chiefs and well-tried braves. 

From near or far, and prudent council hold, 

And war-like preparation make. 

So, too, 
Shosguscan called his Otoe warriors forth. 
And bade them summon up their utmost might. 
And fail not to avenge their chief's affront. 

But when next morning, timorous and cold, 
Flushed o'er the east like one who, half-awake. 
Unfolds a drowsy eye, puts forth an arm, 
And takes a glimmering prospect of his room, 
The Otoe and the Omaha, well-armed. 
Banded for fight and swept across the hills — 



2/2 The Weeping Water. 

Seeking, not waiting, for the foe. And as, 
Along that green and dewy-gleaming land, 
The level sunrise streamed an amber flood. 
The very prairies seemed to move and slip, 
As in an earthquake. Host drew near to host, 
Masses opaque, swart, thundering on fierce steeds, 
Or running with fleet foot. 'Gainst the low sun 
Their cold spears glittered like a sun-glazed sea, — 
Brandished with threats and hate. Then with a 

crash, 
As when in August-storms, among the bluffs 
Above the Platte, or on its heated plain, 
Reverberating thunders peal and bound, 
The fierce tribes met, and each to each with whoop 
Answered — whoop dire as shriek of maddened fiends 
Weltering upon the surges of remorse. 

Then deeds of daring might were done, and hosts 

Battled for sovereign rites, and for the laws 

Of hospitality. The vanquished asked 

No quarter; none the victors gave. The war 

Was no pretence, no hollow sham disguised 

To gain a footing for diplomacy; 

But every blow meant death, and death rejoiced, 



The Weeping Water. 273 

And spread his bloody meshes wide for all. 
But Sananona, who from far had watched 
The progress of the battle, and the death 
Of many warriors saw, turned, sick at heart 
And moaning in h^'s grief, and sought the tent 
That hid his bride Nacoumah. Her he found 
Engaged in sweet domestic ways, alone 
In the wide tent. Within his arm her waist 
He drew, and fondly kissed her beauteous cheek, 
And wept, and said, "Farewell, oh love, farewell. 
My time has come; the tribes too long have fought; 
Too long death ravened on the innocent — 
And I sole cause of war. But, if I die, 
No need of battle or of blood remains. 
No other family must forever mourn 
For my offence, or all will curse my name, 
And in the coming times will haply say, 
'He loved himself; he lived and saw the sun. 
But had no will to spare the braves who died. 
No pity on their children or their wives.'" 
And him Nacoumah answered through her tears: 
''Dear, noble heart, go, battle with our friends; 
Go do great deeds, and win a name for me. 
Why speak of death? The grave is dark and foul — 
19 



2/4 The Weeping Water. 

Forgotten soon, and no man loves the grave. 
Have I no charms'? and care you not to see 
Your prattling children playing at the door 
Of the dear lodge? O speak no more of death." 
But he replied: "I am not left to choose 
Or life or death, the arms of wife and babe, 
Or the fierce worm. Fate has made choice for me. 
Through all last night, while you slept at my side, 
A shadow, with moon-eyes, and chilly touch 
Stood over me, and breathed, in hollow voice, 
' Come, Sananona, come : the grave is made. 
The worm awaits!' But just at morning light, 
A sun-bright figure with a happy face 
Displaced the bodiless spectre of the night, 
And told me that to-day my life shall be 
Far, far away, among the prairie hills 
And blooming valleys of the land of souls. 
I go to meet my fate; but I shall look 
Athwart the gates of morning year by year, 
And peer in every coming woman's face, 
Matron or maiden, hoping e'er for you. 
Farewell, then, oh, farewell." 

So in the long 
And painful rapture of a last embrace, 



The Weeping Water. . 275 

They clung with tears, and bitter, aching hearts, 

Till Sananona, summoning his strength, 

His true Nacoumah's fond arms disengaged,. 

Put on the stolid look an Indian^ wears, 

And turned away and sought the bloody field. 

Where fiercest strained the fight he came, and cried, 

"Hold, Otoes, Omahas, ye warriors brave! 

No further need is there of blood and hate. 

I come to end this cruel war, and save 

Your women's eyes from tears, your babes from 

want. 
Live you, but let me die ! — mine the war's cause, 
Mine be its latest woe. But you henceforth 
Be friends!" 

Then from the conflict paused the hosts 
At gaze, while Sananona, with unfaltering foot 
Strode to Shosguscan, and bowed down his head 
Submissive to his fate; as he would say 
"Strike ! have thy vengeance and fulfill thy cause ! " 
But while the chief stood indecisive, poised 
'Mid diverse motives, from the dusky ranks 
Of furious warriors closely round him ranged, 
A bow-string twanged, an arrow glanced and flew 
Fatal to Sananona. Straight it drove 



276 The Weeping Water. 

To his brave heart, and the hot blood was seen,. 
And he fell backward as a bison falls, 
Shot at its pasture; yet a moment life 
Lingering, he cried "Nacoimiah!" then he lay 
Silent and dead upon the bloody grass. 
But a wan cloud,' that in the midmost heaven 
Had gathered unperceived in the sun's path. 
Sent forth a frightful wail of frightened winds, 
And scattered tearful drops, and, from its edge 
Sulphureous, whirled a luminous, hissing bolt, 
Along whose wake the thunder ran and roared 
Above the hosts. Great horror fell on all. 
But the cloud slipped away into thin air. 
The sweet wild winds sang a sweet song of June, 
And the sun shone. 

Then to the Omahas 
Shosguscan said: "Why do we stand at war? 
The end I sought is reached; due penalty 
Exacted from the insubordinate. 
Had I myself for Sananona's fault 
Awarded punishment, his life, perhaps. 
Had not been forfeit. But I do rejoice 
That he, by me unswerved, before you all 
His blame confessing, finds his just desert. 



The Weeping Water. 2JJ 

In after years, when these vast hosts are gone, 

And other warriors roam these flowery plains. 

It shall be told by many an evening fire, 

For youth's instruction, how this young man brought 

Two peaceful tribes to fearful chance of war, 

And compassed his own death by headlong lust 

That mocked at duty. Sananona's name 

Shall then be synonym of scorn of law. 

Of disobedience. So others all. 

By his sad fate and this brief war forewarned, 

Shall settle to their places with content, 

And just authority no more be spurned. 

Now let the calumet be lit and passed. 

And Omaha and Otoe be sure friends. 

As heretofore." 

But stout Watonashie, 
Turning half way to his own men, replied : 
'^'Twixt me and that fierce wolf can be no peace! 
What was this Sananona's fault ? His fault? — 
He wed a daughter of the Omaha — 
A slip of my own stock. For this alone — 
Because he followed where love's instinct led, 
And prized the natural hunger of the heart 
As something better than a beast's desire, 



278 The Weeping Water. 

As quite too sacred for another's will 

To guide or thwart, he lies here dead to-day. 

But now this crafty chief, Shosguscan, he 

Who is at blame for all this bloody work, 

Would point a moral with the young man's name — 

Victim of pitiless vengeance — and ourselves 

Having dishonored by this show of war, 

From which he gains his end, would pause and 

smoke 
The peace-pipe in a handsome covenant. 
And crawl away, himself secure from harm. 
This must not be! Good friends, it shall not be! 
My arm aches for reprisal, and my will 
Exacts from battle yon disturber's blood. 
No talk of peace be here ! " 

Then flcAv the spears: 
The barbed, sharp arrows hissed along the air, 
And the hot hosts strained to death's furious work. 
As when along the bottoms by the streams. 
In Autumn, when the dense tall grass is dry, 
Two surging fires, by opposite currents driven. 
Eat all before them over untold miles. 
And leave behind no thick tall spire of grass, 



The Weeping Water. 279 

Or tough brown weed, but charred black cUimps 

of roots, 
Unsightly, on the desolated fields, 
So all day long, through feverish hours of noon. 
Till the great sun lay low above the hills. 
The adverse hosts each through the other whirled, 
And death made brutal havoc, and the field 
Was black and bloody with the fallen dead. 
But as the sun, descending, touched the hills, 
And the last breath of winds, that die away 
With sunset, sighed across the world, two chiefs — 
The Omaha, the Otoe, now the sole 
Survivors of that brave, infuriate day — 
Bleeding w^ith many wounds, but black with hate, 
Drew to each other o'er the slippery field. 
Then spoke Watonashie: "Shosguscan, fiend, 
We are well-met at last; come find thy death; 
And by the evening fire in after times. 
It shall be told their children, by the old. 
How Sananona died for hapless love, 
Forbidden by his chief; and also how 
The fierce Shosguscan, who held hearts as cheap, 
And felt no sympathy with others' pain, 



28o The Weeping Water. 

Destroyed two tribes entire, and died himself, 
And left his carcass to the croaking crows." 

To him Shosguscan, weary with his wounds, 

And sick at heart for all his warrior's slain, 

Yet full of wrath, ''I know that death is near, 

Nor would I live, shorn of all majesty 

In these I mourn. For them alone I lived; 

With them 'tis just to die. I stood to-day 

A champion of authority and law, 

But thou of wilfulness and anarchy. 

And both have lost. But I would fight again 

This dreadful fray, and sacrifice, besides, 

The tender mother and her prattling child. 

Unconscious of my thought, rather than yield 

This cause. I could not brook that each should be 

An individual law, for turbulence 

And personal assertion, more than death, 

I dread. But thou, Watonashie, stand forth ! 

The hour demands far else than braggart words. 

For I am proved in battle, and have seen 

Thy whole tribe fall. Thou, too, shalt die; the 

sun 
Shall never look upon thy face again, 



The Weeping Water. 28 1 

Living. Now share thy tribesmen's fate!" 

As when, 
Upon the broad, smooth current of a stream. 
Two iron rams, with long, steel-pointed beaks, 
Lunge at each other's sides, or sterns, or keels 
Below the water-line, seeking some place 
Vulnerable to open to the flood, 
Or hurl, against the iron-plated mail 
Of their thick sides, enormous weight of shot, 
Or ponderous shell, screaming and glad for death, 
Till both, crushed in their seams by monstrous- 
blows. 
Settle and sink sudden into the depths, 
And death o'ertakes the crews, and all is still, 
The fierce chiefs plied each other with their spears. 
And, coming closer, drew their fearful knives, 
And grappled in a struggle fierce, but short. 
And fell, close-locked, in death. 

By this, the rim 
Of western hills, in the cold, wasting light, 
Grew indiscriminate; but up the east 
Hung, in gray peaceful depths, the full-orbed moon.. 
Utterly silent was the field of death. 
So then the women, who from far had marked 



2^2 The Weeping Water. 

The waning battle as their heroes fell, 
And heard the shouts of triumph, and the moans 
Of men death-stricken, fainter grow and cease, 
Warned by the ominous stillness of the eve, 
Stole, timid, with all orphaned youths and maids, 
And infants hushed, as by a ghostly fear. 
Across that dreadful field of moon-lit death. 
Searching for husbands, brothers, sons. 
As when a mother doe, with spotted fawn, 
Hides by a runnel in some cool, blue glen, 
While the brave stag climbs out on some near hill, 
Observant of the huntsman and the hounds, 
But, venturing too far, a stealthy shot 
Reaches his vitals, and he turns and flies. 
Bleeding, and falls before his mate, and dies. 
But she and the weak fawn smell o'er his wounds, 
And lick his face, and moan, and from their eyes, 
Lustrous and large, fall piteous tears, so then, 
When all their slain had found and turned them o'er, 
And knew the light might never break again 
In kindling glances from death-faded eyes, 
They sat them down through lingering, painful 

hours 
•Of the dim night, and, without utterance, wept. 



The Weeping lla/er. 28 



v) 



But when the moon, down her accustomed path 

Descending, touched the west, He who o'errules 

Particular troubles to the general good, 

And pities all, and knows the loyal worth 

Of true wives' tears, and tears of children — such 

As weep a^ father slain — He, pitying, sent 

A sympathetic shudder through the earth, 

And the dead warriors sank to graves of calm. 

But all the tears of children arid of wives. 

In a green hollow of the lonely hills. 

He gathered in a fountain, that the sun 

Dries not in summer heats, but crystal pure 

O'erbrims and murmurs through the changing year. 

Forever on it flows, that gentle stream, 

Fountained by tears, and glides among the hills — 

Ne-hawka — in a valley of its own. 

And passes happy homes, and smiling farms, 

And rolling meadows spotted o'er with flocks 

That drink its sweet, cool waters; and so on 

Past groves of leafy hickory, and beneath 

Low-painted bridges, rumbUng to a team, 

It moves a broadening current, swelled by rains 

Or the chill ooze of Spring-dissolving snows. 

And mirrors back the splendors of the sun, 



284 The Weeping Water. 

And the cold moon, and the wide stream of stars, 
Until, at length, it lingers at the marge 
Of the untamable Missouri flood, 
As loath to mingle its love-hallowed tears 
With that fierce, sandy rage; then looks its last 
On the sweet heavens, by passing day or night, 
And sinks beneath the yeasty, boiling waves. 
Whose like for might and fury earth has not. 



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